


Ash on the Windowsill

by Reikah



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, KuroFai Olympics, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Minor Character Death, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-28
Updated: 2012-01-28
Packaged: 2020-03-01 02:58:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 56,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18791602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reikah/pseuds/Reikah
Summary: It's the end of the world, and the survivors live together in a small village, beset by poison storms. The village doctor, Fai, keeps his secrets tight despite the apocalypse - something that puts him at odds with Kurogane, one of the village's foremost defenders.





	1. Under the red sunlight

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2012 Kurofai Olympics, AU vs Canon! I was team AU, and my prompt was "Under a Blackened Sky". Shoutout to Mikkeneko for hosting!

Every day, Syaoran awoke with the dawn.

Sometimes he didn't know it was dawn, of course, not with the weather the way it could be. But still, he tried. His wristwatch was set to go off at five in the morning, and that was when he got up regardless of what it looked like outside. He had a lot of things to do before school started, after all.

This was shaking up to be a typical day. He got up, had a quick wash using the filtered water from the jug in the kitchen corner, made breakfast for two on the wood stove. His housemate worked until late - or early, depending on how you looked at it - but Syaoran was fairly sure that if he didn't _make_ him eat, even if he had to wake Subaru up to do it, the older man simply wouldn't. Actually, he had the feeling Subaru would be happiest attempting to survive off nothing but cigarettes and his own self-pity, and while Syaoran didn't know what had happened to cause him to be so gloomy - it was terrible etiquette here to ask someone how their life had been _before_ \- he refused to let Subaru wither away.

Breakfast this morning was porridge, with some black tea. They'd run out of sugar, and nobody had seen so much as a glimpse of cow's milk for some time now; there was still the goat milk, but - Syaoran mused as he fit the mug of tea on a tray with the porridge bowl - there probably always _would_ be goat's milk. He hated the stuff, although he drank it diligently every day as per doctor's orders.

Subaru was passed out belly-down in his small cramped bed, in his room upstairs at the far end of the hall. As he did every morning, Syaoran slid the tray onto the night table, shook him awake, and then stood and stared at him with mute, reproachful eyes until Subaru's guilt complex made him pick up the spoon and start eating. He stayed long enough to be sure that Subaru wasn't going to quit, and then he bid the older man goodbye for the day and left to begin his own job.

His bicycle was in the garage where he'd left it, propped up against the far wall. It was the only vehicle in there, the rest of the space fenced off with chicken mesh. This, unsurprisingly, was because there actually were chickens in the garage; seven of them, brown speckled hens who ensured that both Subaru and Syaoran got eggs on a weekly basis. He measured out their feed and checked their water dish before he left, although Subaru was actually pretty good about making sure the chickens were okay; from what little Syaoran knew of his life _before_ , working with animals had been a pretty big part of it.

The hens fed, he turned back to the bike, checking his watch as he did. Twenty-past five, he thought. That was good. His courier's gun belt was slung over one of the handlebars, the holster weighed down with his pistol, small as it was. Syaoran fastened the belt around his hips before sliding the gun out and checking it for ammo; satisfied that it was loaded, he slid it back into place. It had been at least six months since the last ash beast had gotten inside the walls, but it paid to be careful. That done, he carefully opened the garage door, wheeled his bike outside, and closed and locked the door behind him, with as much care as he had opened it.

He and Subaru lived on the outskirts of the village, which was to say, there were a whole seven houses between his and the watchtower that rose out of the village centre. It had been a bigger town _before_ , maybe, but the survivors had torn down most of the buildings they didn't need or couldn't use for supplies. He'd been eleven then, and he'd wanted to help. The adults hadn't let him, not then, not with that particular task. Now with the wisdom of his fifteen-year-old self, he could see he would have been in the way. Not anymore, he thought, as he pedaled lazily toward the watchtower; Arashi was already waiting for him at its foot. Now he was useful, and his job was very important indeed.

"Good morning, Arashi," he called, as he braked the bike next to her. She was one of the town's meteorologists; her husband, Sorata, was the other. "Is there going to be school today?"

"Yes," Arashi said. Her arms were folded over her chest; now she unfolded them, revealing a slip of scrap paper in one hand. It was covered in rough charcoal scribbles. "Eleven to one, three to four-thirty, and most likely eight until shortly after midnight. Did you get that?"

His lips moved as he repeated it to himself, silently working it into his memory, and then he nodded. Arashi gave him one of her long, thoughtful looks, and then turned her head to look at the street snaking away from them. There were only four roads - not that they could really be called _roads_ , the cars had long since been dismantled or dragged away - to the village, laid out at compass-points. Beyond the last house of the north-facing street, the debris wall sat hulking and ungraceful. "Fuuma borrowed our wind gauge," she said, expressionless. "When you see him, ask him to return it today, please."

Some days - bad days, when the storms had started before he'd even gotten up - Arashi would be waiting for him inside the tower with a cup of sweet tea for him to drink once he'd peeled off the filter mask and the protective cloak. Sugar was rare and valuable, and yet she used some of her supply on him. Syaoran knew better than most than to take her deliberately blank exterior at face value. He smiled at her quickly, and when she nodded at him, pushed the bike around and set off toward West street.

The first house you came to on West street was his classmate Tomoyo's - well, technically it belonged to Kendappa and Souma, but to Syaoran, all houses were his friends' first. Tomoyo's house was the only one he used the front door to enter; Tomoyo was kind of strange about some things, and she said using the back door was ill luck. He didn't argue with her. Instead he pushed the door open - she hadn't locked it - and stamped his boots off on the doormat.

"Syaoran?" Tomoyo was sitting at the table in the living room, wearing a fluffy pink dressing gown and a matching pair of slippers. How she could look so immaculate despite the growing shortage of detergent was a mystery that never ceased to puzzle Syaoran. Her house was one of the nicest in the town; not in size, but in terms of decoration. The living room in which she was sat was painted in cheerful, autumnal colours, and behind her stood a great gilded harp. That wasn't hers, of course - Tomoyo sang rather than played - but it added a certain something to her home. She had a woman's shirt across her lap and a needle and thread in her hand, and she gave him a bright, pleased smile. "Is it to be school today after all?"

"Yes," Syaoran said. "Arashi says the storms today will be -"

"Oh! Wait, please," Tomoyo interrupted, carefully putting the shirt onto the table. She climbed to her feet and came toward the entrance hall, bushing past Syaoran to set her hand on the bottom bannister by the stairs. "Sister! Syaoran is here!"

There was a thud upstairs, followed by the creaking of the floorboards as Kendappa obviously stumbled out of bed. Tomoyo turned and smiled at him, and Syaoran returned it nervously. Kendappa could be... alarming first thing in the morning.

"What time did she get back?" he mouthed.

"Four," Tomoyo replied.

The top stair thumped, and a second later Kendappa herself stumbled into view. She looked like it had been a rough night; her hair was wild and there were dark circles under her eyes. She also looked like she was two steps from killing someone. "When," she growled, in a hoarse, morning voice.

Syaoran gaped.

"Sister," Tomoyo said, amused. "You should probably put something on your top half before you greet guests."

Kendappa glanced down at her naked chest as if surprised to see her own breasts, then shrugged. She covered them with one arm, which allowed Syaoran to break his gaze; not knowing where else to look, he stared very intently at his own shoes. "Teenagers," Kendappa said, dryly, and then, more forcefully: " _When,_ boy?"

"Eleven to one!" Syaoran managed. His voice sounded unflatteringly squeaky to his own ears. Next to him, Tomoyo giggled. "Eleven to one, um. And um, three to four-thirty and um, um. Arashi-san thinks the last storm won't be until eight -"

"Eleven," Kendappa said. She checked her watch. "Okay. Fine. Thanks. Little sister?"

"Yes?" Tomoyo sang.

"'m going back to bed until I have to get up for the storm. Let me sleep?"

"Of course," Tomoyo said, and smiled softly. "Sleep well."

"Have fun at school," Kendappa said, and then she was gone.

"Souma and she killed one of the big monsters last night," Tomoyo told him. "I promised dear Sakura I'd share some of the extra meat with her. Would you take it to her? You haven't yet stopped in at the Kinomoto's, correct?"

There was a knowing light to her eyes, and under it, Syaoran blushed. Tomoyo didn't tease him - she never teased him, which made her such a valuable friend - but she did smile at him fondly. Sakura's was the last house he visited bar two, usually because by the time he got around to hers it was only a half hour until school started and she would walk with him to his final two stops. Seeing her was a treat, and it made his morning that much brighter, and Tomoyo knew it. When she followed him to the door and pressed a carefully-wrapped package of greasepaper into his arms, her eyes were warm and knowing. "Goodbye for now," she said. "I shall see you later on at school."

"Yes," he said. He blushed suddenly, harder. "Um, when you see Kendappa, please tell her I'm sorry."

Tomoyo covered her mouth with one delicate hand, giggling. "I think she knows," she said. "But of course I will, Syaoran."

"Thanks," he said, still blushing, and then bobbed his head by way of parting as he righted his bike and carefully wedged the slab of wrapped meat over the back wheel, lashing it on the the cords he kept there for just that reason. Tomoyo waved at him once more, and then closed her door gently but firmly. He heard the lock click in place behind him and nodded.

Tomoyo had known Sakura longer than he had. They'd arrived together, in a small band of refugees - maybe nine people. It had been the last big group. Syaoran had already been here in the village, although he hadn't been living with Subaru back then, he'd been staying with the schoolteacher, Yukito. He'd moved in with Subaru when he realised Yukito would quite like to move in with Sakura's brother. Family - blood-related family, at any rate - was a rare thing, nowadays; so few people had survived the First Storm that the likelihood of two people from any one family making it were next to nothing. Kendappa was no more Tomoyo's blood-sibling than Subaru was Syaoran's, but that was what you did; you moved in with people, you made them your family.

There were perhaps three hundred survivors in the village, and as far as Syaoran knew, they were _all_ there was left.

The First Storm had done that. Nobody knew quite how it started. Nobody really liked to talk about it, but you could see the tension, the fear that its merest mention could bring out in people. It wasn't just the initial explosion of power that was so bad - although Syaoran still had nightmares of _that_ , the tsunami of wild magic that broke across the land, the moment it had hit his house, sometimes disintegrating things (some non-organic, some... organic) and at other points warping them into wild shapes - but the way it had broken the little things they had come to rely on. The little magics that had made _then_ so much better, the weather, the wildlife; the cities had become unsafe, and so they had come here, here where the aftereffects of the Storms were lesser, safer...

Not that that meant much. The sheer heft of the meat tied to the back of his bicycle indicated that. He'd seen a few of the ash beasts in his time, creatures created, somehow, in the First Storm; monsters that appeared out of nowhere during the frequent lesser storms that ravaged the land. They were as aggressive as they were dangerous and it was only thanks to hunters like Kendappa that they hadn't killed everyone yet.

Someday Syaoran thought he might be a hunter. He was a good shot - which was why he was allowed out without an escort, only the .22 calibre in its holster - and he knew he could kill a whole bunch of ash beasts when he was done growing up. He needed to find a teacher. Ryuuo, his classmate who shared his ambition, was of the idea that the two of them ought to be able to convince Kendappa and Souma to take them on; Syaoran wasn't sure he shared it. Still, he mulled it over as he pushed or rode his bike through the town, delivering the message he had been given by Arashi to each household.

Fuuma's was the last house before Sakura's, off East street. He wasn't up when Syaoran pushed the back door open; Kamui was, dressed in hunter black, his weapons spread out across the kitchen table. It was almost time for his shift at the wall, and he listened to the times of today's storms with his sharp, expressive eyebrows drawn together. Sometimes Syaoran wondered if Kamui would teach him; then he remembered exactly how aloof and violent the man could be and quickly forgot it. Still, Kamui was kind enough to fetch Arashi's wind gauge instrument from where Fuuma had left it, wedging open an ash-streaked paperback book titled 'Batter Up!' with a little sticker on its cover warning that it wasn't safe for children.

Kamui followed him out, pulling his bright blue ash mask over his mouth and nose as he did so; he wore a belt of equally brilliant blue around his waist, the better to flag his identity to other hunters in the midst of the storms. Syaoran remembered watching Tomoyo carefully sew orange to Kendappa's black uniform for the same reason, that time after Kurogane had shot Kazuhiko in the shoulder by mistake. Ryuuo said that was to be expected, but Ryuuo was kind of more bravado than brains sometimes. With Subaru working at the clinic as he did, Syaoran had a little more experience with the realities of the hunter's life; he remembered how worried Subaru had been about the bullet extraction and the risk of permanent damage, how for a while they had been terrified of infection. It wasn't glamorous. That didn't mean it didn't have to be done.

Still. He could admire Ryuuo's bravery. Like Sakura said, everyone here had tiny flaws, but it was better by far to focus on the good, the things that made them the survivors. The thought of her as he leaned his bike against the side of her house and began to unleash Tomoyo's gift from its back wheel made him smile. The meat was tricky to wrangle, more for the slipperiness of its packaging than for its size or weight, but he only had to knock on the back door twice before someone opened it for him. His smile faded a little at the realisation that it wasn't Sakura.

"It's six thirty," said Touya, squinting at the sky past his head. "What, you got held up drinking tea or something, brat?"

"To-ya! Leave poor Syaoran alone," Yukito scolded from behind him. He was dressed, sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of something between his hands; of Sakura, there was no sign. Touya gave a small huff of annoyance and stepped aside, and when Syaoran came into the kitchen, took the meat off him.

"Tomoyo said that was for Sakura," Syaoran said anxiously. He craned his neck, trying to peer from the kitchen into Touya's workroom through the open door. "Um..."

"She's getting dressed," Touya said, scowling. "What, are you hoping for a sneak peek?"

Syaoran could _feel_ his cheeks burning.

A new voice came out of the workshop, and a moment later someone pulled the door back from the other side. "Is that Syaoran?" Kazuhiko called. "Are you bullying that poor kid again?"

"Yeah, it's him," Touya said, glaring. Yukito just shook his head, looking more amused than anything, and made a _shoo-ing_ at Syaoran with his hand, silently granting him permission to go inside the workshop. Syaoran nervously glanced up at its owner, who sighed heavily and jerked his head toward it with ill grace. "Don't touch anything."

Touya's workshop was always cluttered, usually with bits of bicycles. Touya was the primary metalworker for the community, and his workshop - actually a quick extension to the house made out of torn-down, scavenged parts of other houses - was overladen with scrap metal, tools, and various sundries whose purposes Syaoran couldn't even begin to guess. Oil lamps hanging from the ceiling in careful homemade safety containers provided the light, since the building itself had no windows. Kazuhiko was bent over the table, a pencil tucked behind his ear and his eyebrows furrowed at the sand table.

"Hey, kid," he said.

"Good morning," Syaoran said politely, and then, even though he already knew, "How is Ora?"

Kazuhiko's mouth turned down. "Same as she was yesterday," he said, too quickly. He turned back to the sand table. "She kicked me out, said this was more important than babying her. We think we're reaching a turning point with the design for the windmills."

"We can't do anything until I get some better tools, I've _said_ this," Touya added irritably from behind them. He came to the sandtable, picking up one of the styluses. "With what I've got at the moment, we'll be lucky if the blades don't fall off of their own accord. I'd need a bigger forge to make blades as big as we need, and I can't..."

Syaoran left them to it. At first the endless debate over the building of the windmills had fascinated him, but at this point they were treading old ground, going over the topic endlessly. He knew why - they were trying to find some new angle - but he was no metalworker like Touya, nor an engineer like Kazuhiko. Quietly he slipped back out to the kitchen, where Yukito was still sitting at the table, his chin in the palm of his hands. Yukito's paleness always looked odd to him, but for a moment, while Yukito wasn't concentrating, Syaoran could have sworn he saw... he could have sworn he saw something strange, something about his hands....

"Syaoran?" Yukito blinked at him in surprise. He smiled, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose with his forefinger. "So, I assume it is to be school today for you and I?"

"Yeah," Syaoran said. He told Yukito the times he'd been given. "What are we studying today?"

"Well," said Yukito, "Last night I picked Touya's brains for what he knows about chemistry - that is what metalworking is, of course, applied chemistry. Today I thought we might do some work on the periodic table of elements."

"Oh, all of it?" Syaoran glanced sharply to one side as Sakura entered the kitchen from the hallway, wearing a plain black dress and stockings. She smiled at him shyly and then slipped into the seat opposite Yukito. Suddenly, Syaoran's palms felt very sweaty indeed. "Do we really need to know, like, Uranium?"

"'Like'?"

She pulled a face. " _Fai_ says language is fluid and words can change meaning. 'Like' is a filler word now."

Yukito smiled the way he did, the corners of his mouth rising and his eyes crinkling, like you'd just told him the best joke in the world. It was a smile you couldn't help but return. "Fai is a doctor," he reminded them. "I'm your teacher."

Sakura grinned at that, a hesitant flash of white teeth, awkward and shy and pretty. Syaoran had to remember to breathe. He didn't know how he felt - Sakura was his friend, his _best_ friend - but he thought maybe it was... it was... it might be more than friendship. Maybe. He glanced away from her and saw Yukito watching him, fingers still wrapped around his cup. Through the open workshop door, Kazuhiko and Touya were still discussing the forging of windmill blades out of bicycle frames and abandoned garden tools.

"Um, are you all done with your rounds, Syaoran?" Sakura was watching him hopefully. "Or do you have to leave to finish up?"

"I still need to visit the clinic and Kurogane," Syaoran said. He swallowed - his throat felt suddenly sharp and parched - and said, "Do you... do you want to come with me?"

Sakura smiled. "Yes! I'm all dressed already, if -"

"We should -"

"Yes, let's -"

Yukito drained his cup. "I'll see the pair of you in class," he said, putting it back on the table, and for some reason Syaoran's eye was drawn to the way he gripped it so tightly, the shiny white ceramic and those long pale fingers wrapped around its surface somehow seeming more... different... Yes, there it was; Yukito's hands were shaking, a slight tremor that made his movements clumsy and slow. Syaoran frowned at them and bit his lower lip, and Sakura touched his elbow gently.

"Let's get going," she said. "Touya, we're leaving!"

Touya stuck his head out of the workshop door. "Fine," he said. "Have a good time at school."

"Aren't you going to wish us a safe journey?" Sakura asked, a slight edge to her voice as she pulled her filter mask down from the hook by the door. 

"No ash beast out there is going to be worse than you, Monster," Touya smirked, and Sakura let out a low warning growl, glaring at him. Touya didn't look worried. "See? Just pull that face and the beasties will go running."

"You _suck_ ," Sakura said, haughtily.

Sunrise was well and truly across the town when they emerged. From Sakura's doorstep they could see Ryuuo, balanced on the clinic roof as he grumpily scrubbed at the solar panels bristling from its walls. Sakura adjusted the elasticated strap of her filter mask, grimacing as she worked it down over her hair to hang loosely around her throat like everyone else's. Syaoran checked his watch, frowning down at the display.

"We'd best hurry," he said, looking down the street at the clinic with its tall dull grey walls, and the house opposite it with its bricked-up windows. "We don't want to be late for class."

Sakura pulled a face. "I already _know_ my periodic table," she protested. "And I know about atoms and electrons and positive and negative charges. _I_ think we should learn something useful."

"We have to keep the knowledge," Syaoran reasoned. "The ash storms won't blight the landscape forever." He grabbed his bike; Sakura walked on his other side, passing him her yellow school satchel to be slung across its handlebars along with his. Up on the clinic roof, Ryuuo sat back and dusted his hands off, squinting at the shiny solar panel surface. Syaoran cupped his hands around his mouth. "Bottom-left of the last panel is still ashy!"

Ryuuo swore, quite colourfully. Sakura giggled, only for it to tail off. "Look, Syaoran!" She pointed down past the clinic toward the wall, the small man-sized gate there opening and the man ducking inside it who was, evidently, larger than 'man-sized'. "It's Kurogane!"

"He must have just finished his shift," Syaoran said. He was still wearing his weapons, the full-sized sword across his back and the guns in their red holsters across his hips; two of them, different calibres. Fai always had plenty to say about that, although Syaoran was pretty sure most of it was double-entendre. Every hunter wore black, to confuse the ash beasts - something about the way their eyesight worked, Syaoran didn't know. After the Kazuhiko incident, they wore another colour, a brighter one, paired with it. Each hunter had a different colour, although some were shared; both Souma and Kazuhiko wore green with their black, for instance. Kurogane was the only one who wore black and red.

"Kurogane!" Sakura waved at him excitedly and he straightened up, waiting as they approached. "Have you just gotten back from the hunt?"

The older man nodded. He had a battered-looking picnic cooler by the handle in one hand; he set it on the ground and peeled off his gloves. As always, craning his neck back to look up at Kurogane's face, Syaoran felt a flash of awe at just how tall he was. Before Kurogane had arrived - a member of the same band of refugees as Sakura and Tomoyo - Kazuhiko and Fai had been the tallest men Syaoran had met, but Kurogane topped them both by half a head. He was strong, too, not willowy like the village doctor.

"Did you catch anything?" Sakura asked, excitedly. Kurogane _tched_ under his breath.

"Couple things," he said, succinctly. "Some of the medium ones."

The ash beasts came in three different sizes. The biggest ones Syaoran had seenwere the size of a horse - a _draft_ horse, if horses had mandibles that dripped acid and heads that could rotate a hundred and eighty degrees. Not to mention the talons and the scorpion-barbed tail. Kurogane had a slash across his cheek that hadn't been there yesterday. It had already scabbed closed.

Syaoran touched his own perfectly smooth cheek with his fingertips, casting a sideward glance at Sakura. She was standing on the balls of her feet, her arms folded over her chest and her head tipped back as far as she could to look up into Kurogane's fierce red eyes. He wondered if she would mind a mark like that on him, and the thought made him uncomfortable.

"You should see the doctor about that," he said. Kurogane squinted at him, then sighed.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm on my way there. Got some stuff for him."

"Oh! Is that what's inside the cooler? Are you bringing him lunch?" Sakura asked, brightly. "That's ever-so-nice of you. He works really hard..."

"No," said Kurogane flatly. "Not unless he's a vampire, and they're fictional. Nothing in here but body bits." Sakura blanched and he quirked an eyebrow at her. "He asked for kidneys, hearts and pancreases, for whatever reason."

"How do you know what bit is what?" Syaoran asked, paling, and Kurogane grinned, the corner of his mouth quirking up in a cruel, sharp smile.

"You take enough of those things apart, you work it out," he said. Syaoran swallowed, then stiffened his spine. Hadn't he just been thinking about the hard work necessary to be a hunter? He _knew_ what they did was gory. Squeamishness, he decided, was pointless.

"I suppose, if Fai asked for them," Sakura said beside him, sound faintly disconcerted. "I'm sure he has his reasons."

"Probably not," said Kurogane, rebelliously. "Or if he does, they only make sense in his lunatic head. Still, I'd better get these to the moron before they spoil or rot or whatever. And you two need to go to school."

"Yes," Syaoran said, still staring at the cooler. Sakura coughed and nudged him. "Oh! Today's storms!"

After Kurogane had listened to the list of times and headed into the clinic itself, they went and waited by the ladder leading up to its roof for Ryuuo. It didn't take Syaoran long to realise Sakura was watching him from underneath her eyelashes, a small, cunning smile on her face.

"What?" he asked, awkwardly.

"You want to be a hunter," she said. "And you want Kurogane to train you."

Syaoran started, knocking his bike over and spilling their satchels over the ground. "I didn't say anything!"

"You didn't _have_ to!" Sakura retorted, covering her mouth with her hand as if Syaoran wouldn't know she was laughing at him beyond it. "You're really obvious!"

"I'm not," Syaoran said, hoping he wasn't blushing. "I don't know what I want to do yet! Maybe I want to be the meteorologist like Arashi and Sorata. Or - or help out in the clinic. Or build things, like Kazuhiko does."

"Kazuhiko is only an engineer now because of Ora," Sakura said, her smile morphing into something sad. "You can be a hunter and do other things. Remember how Kendappa used to be a concert harpist? _I_ think if you want it, you should try for it. Like how Fai said if I wanted to, I could train to be a nurse."

"You'd be a fantastic nurse," Syaoran said automatically. "You're kind and compassionate, and -"

He stopped, his brain catching up with his mouth. Sakura was blushing, and he could feel himself beginning to do so too now, for sure. He swallowed nervously; Sakura broke eye contact, her green eyes cutting away. "Syaoran," she said, slowly, "I-"

"Finally finished!" Ryuuo crowed, hopping off the ladder. "Just in time, too. Let's go to school!"

Sakura and Syaoran stared at him, and Syaoran didn't know what his face must have looked like but it must have been honest to his feelings because Ryuuo actually flinched. Without a word, the moment destroyed, they exchanged a brief, awkward glance, and set to picking up their school bags and the bike.

"What did I do?" Ryuuo asked plaintively behind them. Sakura was talking, assuring him that he hadn't done anything; Syaoran balanced their bags across the handlebars again and glared into midair. It wasn't fair, he thought; but then he supposed that was life for you.

Still. Hunting. He'd have to think about it. There were worse teachers than Kurogane, maybe, and if Sakura had suggested it then maybe she didn't mind...?

"Syaoran, let's go!" Sakura said, startling him. "It's almost seven!"

Yeah, he'd consider it. But maybe when he wasn't running the risk of being late to school.


	2. The cinders, they splinter

There was someone just out of his sight, in the next room. He could hear them moving about - the strangeness of another person so close and yet preoccupied, the rustle of their clothing, the soft hiss of their breathing, and he wondered, for a moment, where he was - who the other person was. Fai turned his head, trying to see; he couldn't quite get leverage but he rolled onto his side, and that was when he heard it.

_... snickt, snickt, snickt._

No! he thought. The urgency of the realisation - memory rushing in - left him breathless; his belly clenched, a hard knot of sheer panic. His heart thudded in his chest and he thrashed, trying to escape the noise, the _noise_ -

He opened his eyes to the gloom of grey morning light sneaking into his room through the warped glass window at the very top edge of the room he used as his own, twisted up in the ratty thin bedsheets. For a moment he just lay there, breathing heavily, his eyes darting around the room as he tried to forget the dream.

_Snickt, snickt, snickt._

With great force of will Fai struggled upright, peeling away the clutching blankets as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. His shorts had rucked up in his sleep, and the clinic floor was icy against his bare soles. He wriggled his toes, staring down at them and watching them move, pink and pale like maggots against the dark blue fornica. His throat was dry and there was sweat cooling on the back of his neck.

He hadn't dreamed (remembered) that event in some time. He passed a hand over his face, sucking in a few lungfuls of fresh air, and then leaned over to the nightstand next to his bed. It was small and cramped - both bed and nightstand - but on it lay a few of his favourite things; chiefly, his lighter and a dogeared packet of cigarettes. He climbed to his feet, unwinding the sheets from his body as he did so and tossing them back on the bed, and then picked up yesterday's t-shirt from the floor and pulled it on. Barefooted, lighter and cigarettes in hand, he pushed open his door only to freeze.

_Snickt, snickt, snickt._

I don't believe in ghosts, he thought, but standing there in the empty hallway he suddenly realised that if ghosts were real regardless, _if they were_ , then belief or lack of might not be worth a damn. He curled his fingers around the lighter, heart pounding, and crept forward, following a sound that might or might not be real, thumbnail slid under the lighter cap as though its tiny little flame would be sufficient to protect him from something that shouldn't even be there...

The sound - _that_ sound - was coming from the main room, the one that had once been the waiting room those many years ago in the before. Before he had come to this place like a parasite; like a crow, a scavenger, taking things left behind by the dead. His feet made no noise against the floor, its coolness forgotten as he slunk up to the corner, looking around it cautiously. If there was - if it was... he had nothing. But he had to know.

There was a sudden hesitation in the _snickt_ noise, and he used the opportunity to look around the corner and relax. It was no ghost. It was certainly not _that_ ghost. The dark head of hair bent over the receptionist's desk with its back to him was familiar indeed. A pair of shiny steel scissors lay to its side, no doubt the source of the noise; Fai straightened up and pushed himself out from the wall, reaching within himself for the comforting weight of his title. The man who made the newcomer look up wasn't Fai Fluorite, paranoid recipient of nightmares, sneaking through the halls of the clinic; it was Doctor Fluorite, G.P, and head of the place.

"I thought I told you not to come in until this afternoon," he said, letting that smile fall across his face like a leaf on a pond; eyecatching but irrelevant to the underneath.

"Syaoran woke me up for breakfast," said Subaru. "I tried going back to sleep, but I couldn't. Besides, yesterday Kamui said he and a bunch of other hunters were running low on supplies, so..." He held up the object in his hands - a reel of bandages. To his left were six heaps of medical supplies, the kind all the hunters carried with them, in case; painkillers, bandages, catgut, needles. A tiny bottle of medical alcohol.

"You need to sleep more, Subaru-kun!" Fai scolded him. "You work too hard."

"I could say the same for you," Subaru said. He nodded at the cigarettes in Fai's hand. "Another nightmare?"

"I don't need to have nightmares to smoke," said Fai, trying for playful and amused. Subaru just _looked_ at him. "Fine. Yes, I had one. Safe to go out to light up?"

Subaru nodded. "Kurogane came over about half an hour ago with the organs you requested. Apparently he met Syaoran in the street; first ashfall isn't until eleven."

"Thank God," Fai said. "I'd hate to be standing outside poisoning my lungs while I poison my lungs." He tapped two of the cigarettes out of the box and stuck one in his mouth, offering the other to Subaru; the young man looked at it thoughtfully.

"I used to know a man who smoked three packs a day," he said. Fai cocked his head to one side, waiting; this sounded like a story of _Before_ , and oh how Subaru hated to talk about _Before_. Much like Fai, really. Everyone carried ghosts around with them here - on their shoulders, holding their hands, in the very air they breathed - but some had heavier ghosts than others. "He was..." Subaru reached out and took the cigarette, turning it over in his fingers, then looked up, a decisive expression on his face. "It doesn't matter. He's gone, now." He stuck it in the corner of his mouth, pushing his chair back and grabbing his coat, draped over one of its arms.

Subaru had been a veterinary assistant before. It was the closest experience anyone in the village had had with medicine, aside from Fai himself. They were alike in many ways. Perhaps that was why they worked so well together.

Fai hadn't always smoked, and truth be told he didn't do it very often even now; cigarettes were a valuable commodity. He knew full well the damage they could do to the body. He remembered dissecting the cadavers in anatomy class, his teachers ruthlessly cracking open the chest cavity to show him the lungs. Still, there was something in the drag of the toxins through his throat, the oily taste left in his mouth; a kind of silent control in breathing the smoke out through his nose slowly, watching it plume in the crisp air and dissolve. He took his time with his, leaning against the outer wall of the clinic and letting the daylight and the smoke and the tiny village itself drive away the night echoes, the noise and the knowledge. 

Then he tossed the butt to the ground between them and let Subaru tread on it heavily with his boot heel.

"What's today's schedule?" Subaru asked him, still halfway through his. He had his collar turned up and his filter mask around his wrist instead of around his throat. Fai couldn't even remember where his was.

"I'm going to go pack my bag and do some visiting," Fai said, decisively. "I want you to collect the paperwork from around the clinic and consolidate it into the patient files."

"You really need to stop writing treatment notes on post-it notes and leaving them in odd places," Subaru said, archly. Fai grinned and rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand.

"Whoops. Probably," he said. "Um... After that... you said Kuro-grumpy brought us some bits of monster?"

"In a picnic cooler," said Subaru. "I put the samples in the little fridge. Do you want me to prep the pancreases for tonight, or resume studying the kidneys?"

"Both," Fai said, firmly. "Umm... Don't forget you're on call while I'm out seeing people! Be prepared to handle any bumps and scrapes. If anyone comes in with a major wound after today's storms, stop the blood flow as best as you can and send someone to find me. You can give your patients any of the medicine in the first two cabinets, but any after that..."

"Check with you and Saiga," Subaru finished. "Yes. Are you going to see Ora?"

Fai paused at that and sighed. "Yes," he said. "I'm taking some of the time-released morphine sulfate in case she needs it."

Subaru tossed down the end of his own cigarette butt and nodded, looking away. Fai understood his reluctance. They'd all seen death, all of them; seen their loved ones die in ways Fai didn't even understand during the First Storm and the wild magic that it had brought with it. But Ora's case was... different. He swallowed dryly, shivering; he was still wearing his sleeping shorts, and he cast for a safe topic.

"How long ago was Kuro-surly here?"

"Half an hour," said Subaru. "I _asked_ if he wanted to talk to you. He said 'hell no'." Subaru glanced at his reproachfully. "He also called you an idiot and said you needed sleep, and to remind you that his name is _Kurogane_."

"It's almost like he's here right now," Fai said, grinning. "Remind me to go see him today and say thank you..."

"I can't stop you," said Subaru, although his tone of voice indicated that he wished he could. Fai looked away, keeping that idle smile on his face. In truth he was happy enough to keep out of Kurogane's way.

He'd had the strangest relationship with the man almost from the day Kurogane had come to the village; he was good at smiling, could charm most people within minutes of first meeting them, but Kurogane... _Kurogane_ had squinted at him - he'd been dressing a wound along the man's shoulder, then, as part of his arrival - and said, "Don't do that. You look like a fucking clown. Do you think you're fooling anybody?"

"What?" Fai had said, too surprised by the edge of contempt in the man's voice to remember to keep the smile up. He forced it back on quick as he could. "That's a bit rude, isn't it, Mister Tall Dark Newcomer?"

"I hate liars," he'd been told sharply. "You're not just a liar, you're bad at it, too. And my name is Kurogane."

Fai had smiled at him, a flash of teeth. "What a scary name," he said. "You weren't from around these parts before the storm, were you? You know, I've got -"

Kurogane narrowed his eyes. They're red, Fai had thought, with some surprise. That was rare. Hadn't red eyes meant something, back in the old days...? "You're the doctor," Kurogane said. He glanced out at the village - it had been in piecemeal back then, houses in the process of being torn down practically by hand, the wall half-erected and manned by armed militia, the ash lying thick on the ground and atop roofs, being swept clear by crews of children - even the pit of ash creatures laying slaughtered near the bonfire, a man and a woman in the process of butchering the corpses for cooking.

"You're the village doctor, one of the most important people here," Kurogane had continued slowly, "You've been here for almost half a year, long enough to be part of them. But you're sitting way out _here_ , like you're not one of them. That bullshit smile, that's part of that, isn't it?"

He twisted abruptly to better glare at Fai, those red eyes narrowed and cool, and Fai had just stood there, too surprised to work out what to say next. He had always been so good at pretending. A heartbeat had passed, then two, before he remembered to smile again. "Mister Kuro-whatever seems to think he was a psychiatrist before," he said, lightly. "But you know, I don't remember seeing him at the Royal College of Medicine. Where I studied. To be a doctor."

"You're not a doctor," Kurogane had said dismissively, and stood up. "Maybe you fool everyone else, but you can't fool yourself by acting the idiot."

"And I'm sure Kuro- _grumpy_ knows all about me," Fai said, emphasising the suffix with bite. "I may not be able to use my magic anymore, but only because the storm broke all our magics. I have the Witchblood brand, not that I'd show it to you -"

"You studied medicine," Kurogane interrupted, "But that doesn't make you a _doctor_ , a healing-mage. It never will."

"Why else would I be at the College?" Fai asked, sweetly, and had watched the way Kurogane's jaw worked. "Would you look at that. I think I'm about done with your injury. You should... go, meet people, Kuro- _blunt_. Do try to be nice. If you can."

Kurogane tossed his head, glaring at him, and bent over to retrieve his shirt. Fai had forced himself to smile wide and raised a hand, flexing his fingers in something not dissimilar to a farewell wave, but sharp. Kurogane turned and walked downhill toward the bonfire and the rest of the survivors, and Fai watched him go with narrowed eyes before finally turning to put his tools back in his case. 

He'd told himself then that he would try to keep interactions with the man to a minimum, obscurely angry with him for his rudeness and the _look_ in those eyes, contempt and something worse, something dangerous: a shred of sympathy.

Of course, he should have guessed - from the scars and wounds and the sheer amount of weaponry Kurogane had walked into the settlement with - that it wouldn't be that easy. 

It hadn't taken Kurogane long to martial the makeshift militia and set about training them, rejecting people and bringing others on board, until he had formed the core group of the ash hunters. And it had been barely two weeks, following that first meeting, before Kurogane was back before Fai with another injury that needed stitching up. Fai had probably spent more time treating Kurogane - patching him up, applying ACE bandages to reduce swelling, stitching wounds closed and on at least three occasions popping dislocated bones back into place - than most other villagers... except one.

Kurogane was someone he could treat. That was what he did - he treated Kurogane, with a bit of sharp-edged teasing to serve as a distraction - and sent the man on his way; Kurogane repaid him for his medical knowledge by fetching him things like guts and organs for study and other purposes. There were other patients he was not quite as able to cure. Ora was one of them, to his inevitable dismay.

When Fai had settled in to begin his work, serving the community, he had foreseen deaths. He had thought most of them would be violent and out of his hands - the hunters who walked outside the walls putting down the beasts; cot deaths, if they lived long enough to create babies; maybe fighting amongst themselves if things got really bad. He had, with the confidence of his technological society, not realised quite how limited the supplies he had were.

To be a doctor was to possess rare healing magic. Kurogane hadn't been wrong about that. He had studied the non-magical forms of healing - the invasive surgeries, the complicated cocktails of drugs, the long minutiae of the human body - at the College, 'just in case'. All young doctors had to, and Fai had been grateful for that when the Wild Magic had saturated the world, shattering all the old magic; it was no longer possible for a healing mage to do just that, just like it wasn't possible for a war-mage to gather enough power for one of their spells, or for a weather-witch to build the power necessary to actually influence the weather. While the lack of war magic or weather witchcraft hadn't bothered the community, the lack of healing magic was a dealbreaker, particular in those complicated illnesses like, say... cancer.

Oruha had come to him a year ago, troubled by a bump in her breast. He wasn't an oncologist. He'd suggested it might be a cyst, and waited six weeks to see if it went away by itself before arranging a mammogram. The clinic had belonged to a physician before the First Storm - that is, someone who did the job of a doctor but possessed no magic - and the small x-ray machine was, just, suitable; the trouble was it drained the limited amount of electricity Fai could get out of the clinic's diesel generator and solar panels something terrible.

He had suspected what they were dealing with, but when he saw the x-ray results he had felt a sudden flash of fear like nothing before, coupled with a gradually rising sense of horror. They didn't have the equipment to perform a mastectomy. They didn't have a trained anaesthetist or theatre staff. He wasn't a surgeon _or_ an oncologist; he had no idea how to tell which specific kind of tumour it was, let alone whether it should be treated with hormones or chemo or radiation. They didn't _have_ any of the equipment for any of those paths of treatment; this was just a local doctor's office, cancer patients _before_ would have travelled the sixty miles to the nearest hospital. He had _nothing_.

She'd been sitting in the former waiting room when he came to tell her, seated on the receptionist's desk kicking her legs absently against the wood. She was wearing black, to match her thick, ringletted hair. She lifted her eyes to him when he approached; and he must have been wearing the news on his face, for he got to watch hers fall before he even said a word.

He told her what she had and waited, expecting the first question to be 'how long?' Instead, she leaned forward, brushing some dust off her knee, and said, in a conversational voice, "I thought I'd escaped."

"I'm sorry?"

She shook her hair back and lifted her chin, looking him in the eye. "My family are Witchblood," she said. "I used to be terrified when I was little, that we'd be tested and forced into service. We were never powerful. My mother, she could find things. Little things, lost things. She always found loose change on the pavements while we were out, someone's lost house keys, things like that. You wouldn't go to her for a missing person, but she had a... knack."

Fai said nothing, just waited with his hands in his jacket pocket. He'd long forsworn typical lab coats for hygiene purposes. Ora licked her lips and swallowed. "My grandmother was... lucky. She was always in just the right place at just the right time, do you see? I lost count of how many times she was _inches_ away from being hit by a car, or having something heavy land on her, or drinking something poisonous... but always, inches away. I used to be so afraid we'd be examined. It was treason to resist conscription, and I was so afraid of being, of being rounded up and tagged like cattle, I didn't even stop to think about what my own gift might be.

"They tagged me when I was a little girl. I think you saw the mark on my chest, the clover leaf? Ever since I was a child, I knew..." She sighed, moving her hand so that her fingertips pressed the spot between her breasts. Fai had noted the tattoo. "I knew I wouldn't live until thirty. It was just a knowing. And now..."

She spread her hands and shrugged, and Fai shook his head, suddenly desperate, suddenly needing to fix this; the bleak smile on her face. "This doesn't have to be fatal. We have options. Breast cancer was treatable before -"

"But this isn't before," she said, implacable. Suddenly she smiled. "It's alright. You've never had to tell someone anything like this before, have you?"

"Ora-san," said Fai, troubled.

"I should have guessed," she continued. "I thought - I thought I'd escaped my fate, you see, after the first storm. Kazuhiko found me. I'd been trapped for two and a half days inside a car. It was a miracle he rescued me, and I thought, maybe the death I saw wasn't mine? But... But - Well."

"We can get to the hospital in the city along the coast," Fai said. "We might be able to clear it out, salvage some things. Ora..."

"Mmm. Do you know something, about growing up knowing you will die?" She leaned back on the desk, her thick, shining hair spilling over her shoulders, and gave him a knowing smile. "I always tried to _live_ , Fai. I think... I think I don't want to go under the knife at your hands. No offence, I just..."

She looked away. "They say if you get it in one breast, even if you have that lopped off, it will probably spring back up again later in the other."

"I don't -" Fai paused. "I can't give you any definites. I don't know when, or how. Ora-san, everything you think you know about cancer assumes treatment. I don't have anything here. It's not going to be good."

"It seldom is," Oruha said firmly, and then she'd smiled at him. It was a reassuring smile. She was giving _him_ a reassuring smile. "And I already told you I'd not last to thirty. See? Now we have a deadline at least."

And what could he have said to that?

He kept a black bag that contained most of the tools of his trade, and a few emergency items beside; a couple of torches, some needles, a scalpel... and in a hidden compartment, some of the fruits of his and Saiga's research so far. Just in case. The bottle of morphine sulfate pills were snugged down at the bottom, packed in scraps of discarded cloth courtesy of Tomoyo; he had other bottles of pills, but he had never had very much of the morphine. Ever since Ora's cancer had starting metastasizing to her bones he'd been giving it to her regularly to take the edge off her pain. He'd asked Kusanagi and Yuzuriha to look for more, on their regular foraging trips, and Saiga was experimenting with Yukito's poppy hybrids, but lacking the drug manufacturers they used to have he had to make do with what he he had.

He dressed as quickly as he could, in his chilly little room at the back of the clinic. It had once been a treatment room, one of four; but sometime between the first storm and their migration to this clinic the ash had begun piling up on the roof and caused a partial collapse. He had two treatment rooms and this room had a hole patched up with wooden boards and canvas sheeting in its outer corner, and a leak when it rained.

"Saiga wanted to see you at some point today or tomorrow," Subaru said when he emerged, dressed for the outdoors in his long tan cloak with its deep hood. He still had no idea where his filtermask had gotten to, but he'd found his goggles. His bag was resting solidly across his chest, the strap over his shoulder. Subaru was wearing a pair of spectacles that kept slipping down the bridge of his nose; he looked distinctly uncomfortable, like they weren't his glasses. Probably they weren't. "He said he has something to show you."

"Okay," Fai said agreeably. He checked his watch. "First storm is at eleven?"

"So I've heard," Subaru agreed. Sometimes Fai looked at him and saw an echo, faint and distant, of a younger boy; sometimes he thought that whatever had left Subaru jumping at shadows and working through the nights, that had left those lines in the soft skin around his mouth and eyes - whatever it was it had come before the end. It made him wonder, occasionally, if perhaps in some ways the first storm hadn't come as some sort of relief to Subaru, distraction from his woes. He didn't think he'd ever know.

That was alright. There was plenty Fai kept silent about too.

 _Snickt, snickt, snickt_.

Talking wouldn't help. Actions were all that mattered; actions were the only way he could begin to make up for what he'd done.

* * *

There was a certain kind of oiliness to blood, so long as it was wet. Drying, it became tacky and thick, wedging itself firmly under your fingernails and in streaks along your skin. Kurogane could feel it congealing as he hurried through the village, and the feel of it, jellied and clotting, was enough to speed him on even more than he already had been. He wore it impregnated in his clothes; along his cheek, although his goggles and the mask had kept him from getting it in any orifices. It was even in his _hair_.

He didn't know how Kamui could have bled so much and still be living; the monster had gotten him good, claws under his makeshift armour and digging _in_ , the soft pale skin of his chest ripped open and the wet gleam of organs inside. Kurogane had thought him dead then, watching him fall, hands to his chest as if to hold the contents in as the ash flakes swirled around them and the monster that had gutted him roared, its split-jawed mouth opening in quarters, its facial tentacles whipping in triumphant glee.

He'd taken its head clean off. Spurn him for old fashioned as the other hunters might, but Kurogane could never give Ginryuu up; not just because of what she meant, but also for the power she had. Their pitiful machetes took several blows to behead the ash beasts, but Ginryuu - steel flashing, silver and bright even in the red-tinged dullness of the falling ash; bloody snowflakes that settled on cloaks or skin, that speckled the growing pool of Kamui's blood with flecks of grey and never ever melted.

He'd killed the monster that assaulted Kamui, and more beside; sharp, heavy arcs of Ginryuu's honed edge, slashes that split hide to the bone and cleaved the bone too, blows that no monster walked away from. It was only afterward - seeing Souma bent over the young man, his face pale but jaw clenched, blue-tinted eyelids flickering - that Kurogane had realised not all hope was lost for him.

"Fetch the doctor," Souma had yelled, even as he bent to assess the damage himself; and for a moment he had frozen, childish in his wish not to see _that_ man, the liar who stood in the wreckage of everything and clung tight to things that no longer mattered. Souma had balled up her fist and slugged him in the forearm. "Fetch the fucking _doctor_! Now! I don't care what's going on, move!"

Her lips were pulled back, her teeth gritted and white; her filtermask had been pulled free and ash swirled sweetly, landing with soft delicacy amidst the pink of her mouth. Her eyes had been filled with fury and panic mixed and inseparable, and Kamui had been so pale and so still. Kurogane went.

It was long past midnight, although he only knew that from guesswork. There was no moon visible through the clouds. Ash trickled from the sky as he sped through the village, houses shut down tight for the nightly storm; shutters barred, no cracks to let so much as a drizzle of light through. He didn't need light to guide him, he knew this place well enough, and he counted his breath as he hurried, his boots crunching layers of grit beneath it. Six steps west, and _here-_ that silhouette on his left would be the metalworker's house, yes; and there was his own, which meant, opposite it, squat and flat-roofed and grey -

He shouldered open the main door, letting in a flurry of whirling ash. There were no lights burning, just a stack of papers on the counter, which went billowing across the room. He ignored them, hurrying onward; another set of double doors - and then to the left, the room that said _Treatment Room 4_ on the front in big brass manufactured plates - he shoved the door open hard enough it bounced off the wall, sweeping into the room with his cloak whipping around him, shedding heaps of grey to the floor; and yes, that was Fai, tangled up in his sheets and pale as ever, dreaming even now while people died. The thud of the door had made him stir; he twisted in his sheets, made a small frightened noise. He didn't speak, but he turned, throwing an arm over his eyes.

"Oi," Kurogane snarled, bending over. He set a hand on Fai's shoulder and shook it roughly. "Get _up_!"

Fai's eyes snapped open with a suddenness that Kurogane knew well; it was how he awoke, alert and ready for battle. He swallowed sharply, once, twice, and then blinked several times in succession; his eyes - blue as ever - focusing on Kurogane's face. "Kuro... it's you," he said, evidently too groggy to come up with an insulting nickname; and then his features sharpened. "What happened?"

"Injury," Kurogane said. "Kamui's been gutted - come _on_ ," and to his relief Fai didn't argue; his slid out of bed - in his pyjamas, barefoot and in sleeping shorts, a short-sleeved t-shirt that didn't wholly conceal his Witchblood tattoo - and scrambled to his feet; he hurried across the room to a black bag hanging from a hook by the door - his medical gear. "My cloak, it's on the desk," he said, jamming his feet into his shows, his long legs skinny and pale, the blond hairs fine and flat despite the chill in the air. Kurogane grabbed his cloak and tossed it to him as he finished working the right shoe on. Fai's goggles were on the desk next to it, but there was no sign of his filtermask; impatiently Kurogane reached to his throat and hauled his own off. "Here."

Fai took the goggles and pulled them on, but ignored the mask, instead sling his bag over his head. He hurried out of the open door, grabbing a reel of bandages from the receptionist desk and beginning to wind them over his mouth and nose even as he stepped outside into the howling ash. Kurogane didn't bother arguing with him; just followed him, grabbing the idiot roughly by the elbow and towing him along as he took them both back to where Kamui had fallen. Fai was silent for once, content to let Kurogane lead.

Souma was bent over Kamui when they arrived, holding out her cloak over him to keep the ash off; he had his face turned to one side, his teeth gritted and his eyes closed test. His chest was rising and falling in rapid panting breaths, and Kurogane took that to be a good sign; but Fai took one look at him and swore under his breath, running the last few steps and dumping his bag to the ground.

"I didn't touch him," Souma said helplessly; "I didn't know -"

"It's fine," Fai said, muffled through the bandages. He reached into his bag, pulling out an elastic band, and twisted the long fall of his pale gold hair into a rough ponytail, forcing it out of his face. Next came a cardboard box and a pair of surgical gloves; following that, bandages, tape, scissors; triage equipment not unlike the sort each of the ash hunters carried with them. Fai pushed Kamui's cloak away from his chest with gentle fingers, then lifted the individual halves of his armour, his whole face one of concentration. There were three wounds; two long shallow gashes of minor claws, one deep furrow of the main claw with a bloody puncture wound at one end. Fai leaned close to Kamui, practically pressing his ear against his chest as though listening for a heartbeat; then his mouth tightened and he sat back, reaching for one of the wrapped field dressings.

"Kuro-ash," he said, distracted - his most unoriginal name, used thoughtlessly here for lack of concentration to spare for annoyance. He tore open the packaging for one of the cotton field pads with his gloved fingers, then held the packaging out over his chest and taped it down neatly. "Get back to the clinic and bring me the stretcher in the first treatment room."

"I'll go," Souma said, quickly. She glanced up at Kurogane, her dark eyes fierce. _Watch over him._

"I'm fine," Kamui said, which was idiocy of such epic proportions Kurogane could feel his eyebrows lifting.

"You will be," Fai said, pulling his bandages down to fix the young hunter with a smile that somehow managed to look warm and real. Underneath it, Kamui subsided. "Let's just tie this dressing, and then I want you to roll onto your side for me. It'll help you breath better."

"Feel... a bit lightheaded," Kamui agreed. Fai began to fasten the dressing. Kurogane kneeled cautiously opposite him, watching the way the man's long fingered hands worked as he cut the bandages and expertly folded them over the wound.

 _You were never a healer,_ he thought. Fai hid it well, and he had all the signs of a healer; the Witchblood brand on his back, the King's own crest of a phoenix in flight that indicated he was one of the rarest and most powerful Witchblood. He knew medicine. But there were other signs, minor, tiny things that Kurogane had noted because in the world of the before that had been how he had survived; by watching, and noticing, and saying nothing, letting the pieces fall into place with his own observation. And in times like these, watching Fai, careful and deftly competent as he worked to seal the injury - Kurogane was no idiot, he could guess by Kamui's breathing he had some kind of lung damage - he could see that Fai was either lying about having healing magic, or had grown used to its absence in a truly short amount of time.

"Kuro-mute, you have a watch, right? I want you to put pressure on this for at least five minutes to help close the bleeding," said Fai, and Kurogane narrowed his eyes but leaned forward and pressed the heel of his palm to the site of the wound, resting his other hand on top and pressing _down_. Kamui shuddered under his hands.  
"Like this?"

"Like that," Fai confirmed. He touched Kamui's hair; the boy's eyelid slid open a slit. He looked ridiculously pale. " We're going to move you now, okay? Keep relaxed and concentrate on breathing."

"Is he gonna be alright?" Kurogane asked in a low voice, and Fai hesitated and then, after checking that Kamui wasn't looking, gave an exaggerated shrug.

"What happened?" he asked, moving around Kamui and gently repositioning his limbs.

"They were smarter than usual," Kurogane muttered. "The one that got him... that one..." he jerked his head over at the corpse, lying where he'd felled it, "It reached underneath his armour. I've never seen the bastards do that before."

Fai glanced up at him. "Maybe they're feeding off the wild magic."

"They can do that?"

A shrug. "I don't know. But they only come out during the storms, and the storms have wild magic riding behind them. Maybe." Fai hesitated, and then added, hurriedly, "I'm just a medic."

Kamui's breathing wasn't getting any worse, but neither was it getting any better. When Souma arrived with the stretcher - and a stumbling, half-awake Subaru - Fai's mouth was a thin line indeed. "He'll need an x-ray," he said to Subaru, "He's showing signs of fractured ribs and I wouldn't be surprised if he's developing traumatic pneumothorax too - which means more power; how much fuel do we have in the stockroom?"

Subaru paused. "Not much," he said, quietly. He knelt down on the ground near Kamui, reached out with hesitant fingers to touch the back of one gloved hand.

Fai paused, watching his... nurse, apprentice, trainee physician - whatever the hell Subaru was - and as Kurogane watched a sympathetic expression passed, fleeting and soft, across his face. "He'll be okay," he said, gently. "Subaru-kun. He'll be okay."

Subaru swallowed.

"Stop worrying," Kamui murmured from the stretcher. "... Worry too much. 'm not gonna end up like her."

Subaru's eyes flashed, and Fai turned away, pretending to be occupied checking his tools. Kurogane looked away, too - wasn't any of his damn business what those two had to say to each other, and he really didn't care who _she_ was. It was a concept he had tried to explain to Fai, that what came before had come before. It didn't matter anymore. He didn't, couldn't care about the past, because he couldn't change anything and caring too much just left you stranded, unable to move on.

Kind of like Fai, with his pretty, pretty little blank smiles, the way he said nothing of worth and lived his life on the rim, keeping quiet and out of the way. Trying not to be a _burden._

Kurogane knew how to read people. And most of what he read from Fai was fear. He wondered, now, about that noise - that breathless, small, unconscious noise, made in his sleep. "Hey," he said aloud, sharp so Fai would hear him, and then froze when Fai glanced up at him. Guileless blue eyes, an expression of innocent curiosity; the man knew the role he was playing very well indeed.

Fai blinked at him and then the corners of his mouth tweaked up, a lazy, idle smile, just enough of an edge to make the hair on the back of Kurogane's neck rise. _Don't trust me,_ it said; _I'm dangerous_. For the first time Kurogane realised that this, this smile was just for _him_ , that sharp razor hidden amidst its candy floss sweetness deliberately and specifically there to annoy _him_. Fai was reading him even as he was reading Fai. His jaw worked for a moment; and then he blew out a huff of air, decided to let it go for now and come in again later, circle the defensive shield that was Fai and try from another angle. "You need any help?"

"Is Kuro-slaughter a surgeon now?" Fai tossed his head and chuckled throatily. "I had no idea. But - oh, he is _ever_ so skilled with that long thick knife of his..."

His tone made Kurogane's skin _crawl_ , even knowing it was deliberate. Fai was smiling that smile at him, heavy-lidded blue eyes; but Kurogane remembered that noise he'd made - honest and afraid and the truest he'd ever heard from this man. He looked away, down at the man-child under his hands, trying to remember how old Kamui was. Nineteen? Seventeen? Somewhere around there. Same age as Subaru. He could feel Kamui's chest rising and falling in quick, shallow movements under his palm, and this was not the _time_ to be preoccupied with the stupid doctor and his stupid tricks. "Oi," he said, pitching his voice low and refusing to look up at Fai, "Is it okay to let go now?"

Fai's clothing rustled and then he was beside Kurogane, nudging him out of the way and taking his place by Kamui's side; he tilted his head, squinting at the bandages thoughtfully, then nodded. Flakes of ash were caught in his hair, where it had slipped free of his hood. His lips twitched, the edges curling down and then up again. "Yes. Let's get him on this stretcher. Subaru-kun -"

It took three of them to move him. Fai insisted on them propping him up on the wounded side, for some reason, so they had to lash him on sideways. Kamui was very pale and very quiet as they did so, but Kurogane caught the kid watching him, and despite the ever-present goggles there was no hiding what he was asking for without words.

"Tch," Kurogane said. He stepped back. "You can get him back without me."

"Kurogane?" Souma's eyebrow arched at him curiously, and Subaru glanced up to see what was going on; Fai didn't turn around, fixing Kamui's mask back in place for him. There was blood, wet and shining, on his plastic gloves. "What are you...?"

"It's still storming," Kurogane reminded her. He held out an arm; his cloak was still coated in ash, but against the black inner lining the fall was more obvious. "Could be more attacks any minute now. I need to get back out there and do my share, and his too, otherwise..."

He let the sentence trail off and saw Souma nod. Fai straightened, finished with the mask, and nodded at her; she and Subaru hefted it between them while Fai retrieved his bag. He was still wearing his sleeping clothes. Kurogane helped him pick up some of the things he'd left lying around, some ashy where he'd left them uncovered; surgical tape, scissors. He passed them to Fai, who loaded them into his bag.

They didn't talk. That was fine with Kurogane, who preferred silence to falsities.

* * *

Fai pushed open the door without knocking, not that it mattered. Kamui was fast asleep, still propped up on his right side to take some weight off his working lung; Subaru was sitting next to his bed, arms folded over the sheets and head pillowed on the back of one hand.

"Hey," Fai said.

"I'm not hungry," Subaru said.

"I know." Fai took a few more steps into the room, letting the door swing closed behind him. "I'm going out. I need to see people. If anyone comes in, tell them to wait for me if it isn't urgent; if it is, _you will handle it_."

Subaru looked up at the sharpness in those last few words, the uncharacteristic coolness in Fai's voice drawing his attention. His eyes were inky in the weak light. "I have to watch him, in case he -"

"I know," Fai said again, gentler. "He's asleep, Subaru-kun. Other people might need you. I said he'll be fine. Do you trust me?"

Subaru looked at him for a while, then down at Kamui. His mouth turned down and he rubbed his palms together, a faraway look on his face. In a small voice, he said, "I don't trust anyone anymore."

Fai leaned over Kamui, inspecting the site of the chest tube. It was as he'd left it, taped rigidly into position, siphoning out the trapped air in Kamui's abdomen. The boy himself looked peaceful, eyes closed and breathing shaky but not too off. Fai had given him something - not a tranquilizer, just a light sedative, enough to help him listen to his body's demands for rest. That was all he could really do at this stage, now the young hunter was past the triage. Let the boy rest, and pray to gods he had never believed in that he didn't need surgery. "When did you last check his blood pressure and his pulse?"

"Fifteen minutes ago," Subaru said. He handed over a page torn out of a notebook. "Here."

The numbers looked normal. Fai glanced up from the page and watched as Subaru leaned forward again. He didn't know what was going on with those boys anymore than he knew what Subaru had left behind, and truth be told he didn't want to. It'd make it easier if Kamui died.

He kind of wished he hadn't seen the way Subaru touched Kamui's wrist, so soft and so lost, like a man clinging to a lifeline. He wished for a lot of things. He never got them.

"Eat something," he said, because it was all he could say, and then he left, letting the door fall softly shut behind him.

The village was hectic when he stepped outside; there was an ash storm in two hours and thirty-six minutes, by his watch, and there was a lot of work being done before then. The crude tents were being erected over the vegetable fields to keep the seedlings from smothering to death under the ash; three chickens scuttled past the clinic door, a frustrated Ryuuo scrambling in pursuit attempting to negotiate with them - "Come back, I'll give you the good feed!"

It was all quite routine, but still, Fai paused for a moment on the clinic doorstep, breathing in deeply; the scent of roasting meat and humanity and, rich and ominous, the old blood stench of the oncoming storm. He fixed his smile on his face and forced tranquility inside himself, reaching for some old trick learned a long time ago, for different reasons.

(Smile to hide the fear; smile to keep him from being scared and if you _believe_ , then maybe, just maybe, it will become real.

 _Snickt, snickt, snickt._ )

His third stop was Saiga's foster, Watanuki. The day before yesterday one of the other kids - the girl he liked, Himawari - had whacked him in the eye with a rubber ball by accident during some game they were playing in the schoolhouse. Yukito had sent a rather frightened Sakura to fetch him; he'd arrived to see Watanuki sitting by one of the desks, huddled up with both hands covering his eye. He'd burst a blood vessel in it and the whole eye was bright red; Fai had had a look, seen that there was going to be permanent damage, and taped a bandage over it with strict orders for Watanuki to let it alone to let it heal. Now was time for a check-up.

When he pushed open the pharmacist's door his nose flared slightly, catching a scent familiar to him indeed from his days in the College, as it no doubt was to most students. Watanuki was doing his homework in the kitchen, still wearing the bandage; he looked up when Fai entered, his one working eye widening. "Good afternoon, Watanuki-kun," Fai said.

"Good afternoon," the kid repeated. He turned the pencil over in his hands. "Do you want Saiga?"

"Yeah," Fai said, "But I came to have a look at your eye too. How's it been?"

Watanuki scrunched up his face. "It stings," he said, pushing his chair away from the table. Fai pulled his bag off and rummaged in it until he found one of his thin, fine torches; like all houses the light in the place came from oil lamps, kept brimming with the fat from the ash beasts. It made for a dim, smoky kind of light. Watanuki went stock still as Fai gently pulled the dogeared bandage off, the way people generally did in the midst of an eye exam, and when he clicked the torch on and shone the light at his damaged eye he could see straight away what he had not before.

"Okay," he said. "How much can you see?"

"Nothing," Watanuki said, blinking rapidly. He closed his good eye, frowning. His damaged one was still painted reddish with blood. "It's... really blurry, but I think... I think I see two lights? Is that normal?"

Fai sighed, turning the torch off. "Your iris has been damaged by the impact, Watanuki-kun," he said gently. "It's come away from the actual eye, so it's letting more light in behind it than it should. That's why you're seeing double." He gently touched his knuckles to Watanuki's chin. "Turn to the left. Then the right."

"Will it heal?"

And there was the crux, wasn't it. Fai let out a deep breath, becoming only just aware that he had been holding it, and shook his head. "In the old days not even doctors could fix this," he said. "People used to have to go to _surgeons_. They used to sell special contact lenses to block up the gaps and reduce the extra amount of light shining into your eye, see? But we don't have any of those things anymore. I'm going to give you some drugs to stop more damage from happening - take them every morning, and I also want you to put a patch on it at night to stop it getting worse."

"Worse?" Watanuki was looking at him, worried. "How worse is worse?"

"Worse vision-wise," Fai said. "This won't kill you, Watanuki-kun. Don't worry about that." He pulled his notepad out of his pocket and wrote _Acetazolamide_ on it in careful, full capitals, then tore it off and handed it over to Watanuki. "Talk to Saiga-san about this after I'm gone, okay? He's a pharmacist, he's better equipped to explain consequences than I am."

Watanuki took it, looking down at the printed letters with trepidation, then reached up and touched his fingers to the skin under his damaged eye. "She didn't mean to hit me," he said. "She didn't even hit me all that hard."

Fai nodded sympathetically. "Sometimes these things happen. I knew -"

He stopped, not wanting to worry the boy unduly; but Watanuki's good eye sharpened on him and he said, "You knew what?"

"I knew of a man who died after being punched in the back of the head," Fai said. "It was at a bar fight; they were both drunk and the attacker had no intention of killing him."

Watanuki considered this, blinking, and then raised a hand and clamped it over his face, covering his damaged eye with its distorted iris. "I guess I won't be a hunter now," he said, and he sounded brave, like it didn't matter - but Fai knew better.

He pulled out the chair next to Watanuki, settling into it, and folded his arms across the table. "You could still be," he said, amiably. "You'll have issues with depth perception and lack of peripheral vision, but if being an ash hunter is what you want, you could do that."

Watanuki was watching him, his damaged eye slightly unfocused, the dented iris pointing off-key. Fai laced his fingers together and stretched out his arms. "Of course," he said, "All the boys in your class want to be hunters, don't they? Syaoran-kun and Ryuuo-kun and all the others, I've seen them practising fencing with sticks in the street."

He saw the way the boy's fingers curled into themselves, a small fist on his lap. "Yes," he said.

"Today I put twenty five stitches in Kamui-kun's chest," Fai said, deliberately casual. "He took a wound yesterday fighting ash beasts, and part of that injury was a laceration that pierced his lung. Air leaked out and pooled in the area between his lung and the actual wall of his chest, so I had to stab him right here -" He lifted an arm and touched the safe spot near his armpit - "- I stabbed him right there with a chest tube, because there's nothing important right there, and pumped the air out. He might need surgery. His chances of survival are even odds."

The colour had drained out of Watanuki's face. Fai lowered his arm. "Remember the time Kazuhiko-san got shot?" he continued evenly. "He still has to do physical therapy to stop his shoulder locking up. Ryuuo-kun and Syaoran-kun and the other kids... They don't know, yet, what it is exactly the job entails. It's not all standing around looking cool with weapons."

Watanuki swallowed and looked away hastily, and Fai watched and waited. Eventually the boy said, "I don't want to be called a coward because I don't want to fight."

Fai snorted. "Fighting doesn't solve everything," he said. "There are a lot of people here who don't fight. I... I did my share of combat."

"You did?" Watanuki was looking at him, worried. "When?"

Fai thought of Subaru, turning the cigarette over in his hands. "It was a long time ago," he said quietly. "It doesn't matter now."

Watanuki was looking at him, his unfocused eye twinned with the undamaged one somehow conspiring to give him a piercing gaze. "I-" he started to say, then stopped as the door to the kitchen from Saiga's workroom banged open.

"Hi," said the giant, familiar plant that had come into the room through it on long human legs. Watanuki rolled his eyes.

"Hello yourself," Fai said cheerfully. The plant made its way to the table, dark leaves rustling as the legs beneath it took steps; and then Saiga put it down and walked out from behind it, looking proud. Or at least, Fai thought he looked proud; the dark sunglasses he wore - indoors, in this poor lighting - made it hard to tell. He reached out and took one of the spiky leaves between his fingers. "Well, this brings back memories."

"You have no idea how hard it was to find the seeds," the pharmacist replied, not even bothering to hide the satisfaction in his voice.

"Because what we really need in this village is cannabis," said Watanuki, squinting at the plant.

"No, what we need is _drugs_ of any sort," Saiga said. "You'd be surprised how many of the big pharmaceutical companies use ground-up bits of this plant in their pills anyway. How's your eye?"

"Ruined for life," Watanuki said with a philosophical shrug. He peered up at the plant. "I thought you were abandoning the project because of the soil p.H?"

"When we were at the College we grew ours on a windowsill," Fai said absently.

"'We'?"

Fai froze. Watanuki was watching him with open curiosity, and it was hard, suddenly, to swallow down that lump. "My, uh. My roommate and I."

"I grew mine in a cupboard," Saiga said dismissively. " _And_ on the windowsill. And in my university laboratory for my thesis. But this isn't for recreational use; I thought you might want to try some of this with Oruha."

The idea wasn't actually a bad one. Fai rolled the leaf between his fingertips, feeling its velvety softness, and forced his mind away from the dark place it had gone to. It was very hard. His belly felt tight and cold, like there was a vacuum in his chest sucking everything else into it; _snickt snickt snickt_ went the sound in his mind. "It's worth a try," he said quietly.

"I can prepare it for her by tomorrow morning," Saiga said. "I have some other things I needed to get on with today, and you've already been in to check on her, right?"

"Yes," Fai said. It hadn't been a long visit. Like most terminal patients, Oruha had bad days and good days, and today had been a bad one. Lately she was starting to show symptoms of her cancer metastasizing to her brain; Kazuhiko had pulled him aside to tell him about her personality changes, and she had had a fearful headache while Fai was with her. He'd given her a slightly stronger dose of morphine sulfate. She didn't have long, he knew it with a kind of dull certainty rooted in his bones.

"Where are you going from here?" Watanuki asked. "You could stay if you liked, I'm cooking dinner and there's a storm in about five minutes."

Fai checked his watch. "Back to the clinic," he said, standing up and smiling his most charming smile. Watanuki returned it, the way most people did. "I'm _so_ sorry to miss one of Watanuki-kun's wonderful dinners! I'm supposed to be meeting someone there." He gave Saiga a significant look as he said this, and the man nodded calmly. "I'll be seeing you tomorrow then?"

"Sure," Saiga said.

"Um - " Watanuki paused, hesitated. He pressed his palm over his eye, focusing on Fai with his good one. "Thank you, for what you said. The drug you said..."

"I'll be over with that tomorrow," Fai said. "Keep it covered and stay safe. No more rough-housing with Doumeki-kun!"

A spasm of irritation passed over Watanuki's sharp features. "As if I would! That great big idiot deserves everything he gets - do you know he never ever remembers to -"

Fai grinned. "Yeah. I know. I've heard you and him before, Watanuki-kun." He checked his watch. "Before I go, though, let me redo the patch for you?"

Watanuki nodded his consent and stood frozen as Fai pressed a clean pad over his eye and fixed it in place with strips of older bandage. The reddish, deformed eye was disconcerting to look at, but it wasn't dangerous. Watanuki would live, and find something else to do than be a hunter because the other boys thought it was cool.

 _I need to stop caring,_ he thought. _I've failed them all before. I'll do it again. And the more I know..._

("Any attempt to bring death to a full-fledged Witchblood can only be counted as _treason_. After all, all such creatures are property of His Majesty King Taishakuten... are they not?")

It was storming by the time he stepped out of the door. All the vibrancy, the life that had choked the narrow streets of the village - it was all gone, faded into obscurity. There was nothing but bleakness and the ash, heavy and biting as it fell from the skies, filling up the narrow gaps between houses and landing atop roofs. The clinic, being flat-roofed, looked almost conical when Fai reached it, backlit by the blood red ash clouds.

As soon as he closed the door behind him he could see his visitor had already arrived; there was an extra cloak hung up on the peg by the door, an extra filtermask and goggles left on the receptionist's desk. Fai hesitated, torn; and then he went to check in on Kamui. He found the boy still sleeping and still breathing; Subaru didn't appear to have moved a muscle since he'd left. The young man lifted his eyes to meet Fai's and said, flatly, "No change."

Fai came all the way in and bent over the young hunter. He looked so _thin_ and so pale; it reminded him uncomfortably of himself at that age, seen reflected in the mirror's surface and... in other things. In the inky light Subaru looked much the same. They could have been brothers, perhaps even -

 _No,_ he thought, angry at his own mind for shying away. _It's a word. Deal with it. It just means 'two,' that's all._

They could have been twins.

It hit him like a sucker punch to the gut despite his pitiful attempts to steel himself, anger and grief inside him, rising like a tide; Subaru wasn't paying him any attention, but he managed to slur out something - "I've got a patient waiting."

And then he ran.

The bathroom didn't work anymore, the plumbing wasn't connected and the cistern was full of bad water. Instead of aiming at the toilet bowl or the sink he simply bent over the empty mop bucket and let it all come up, the porridge he'd hastily wolfed down a few hours ago, the water, tea Arashi had pressed on him - but mostly bile; he hadn't eaten enough. The violence with which his stomach expelled its contents sprung tears to his eyes, and after he was done he staggered back a few steps, gagging and weeping and terribly, helplessly numb.

 _I can't do this,_ he thought, wildly, desperately, _I can't do this - you fucking - you - how dare you do this to me - I can't..._

But he had to, he knew. And eventually he wiped his eyes dry with his sleeve and dragged the mop bucket around to the back, braving the storm uncloaked and unmasked to toss the foul-smelling contents out on the refuse heap; and when he came in again, he was the very picture of composed.

Yukito was waiting for him in the other working treatment, absently leafing through one of the paperback books Fai kept around the place for just that reason. He looked up when Fai shoved the door open and smiled uncertainly. "Hello," he said, and Fai breathed in deeply through his nose and smiled back.

"Hello there," he said, pushing the door closed behind him. He crossed the room to the bottle of filtered water sitting on top of one of the tables and poured himself a cup, drinking deeply to wash out the horrible sour taste from inside his mouth. Yukito closed the book gently. "How were you today?"

Yukito glanced away. "Not good," he said. "I started feeling... feeling woozy around lunchtime..."

Fai put down the mug with a click and padded toward Yukito, who settled down and watched him trustingly. "Are you showing hyperglycemia symptoms?"

"Yes," Yukito replied without hesitation. "I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, and I've been rushing to use the... the restroom all day."

Fai nodded. "Okay," he said. "Did you remember to eat lunch?"

Yukito shook his head. "We didn't, um. To-ya wanted to have a large dinner tonight. I didn't want to say anything. I know, I know - I need carbohydrates and I need to watch what I eat, but I don't want To-ya to know, doctor." He paused and then sighed. "If he knew he would - He would. He would do things."

There was a refrigeration unit in the far corner, the only working one in the whole village. One of the diesel generators was devoted exclusively to keeping it running. There Fai and Saiga stored the results of their experiments on the creature bits Kurogane bought them, and Fai made his way over to it now, pulling the door open. What he wanted was stored on the top shelf, kept in glass vials deliberately mislabelled _Glycogen_ in Saiga's flowing handwriting. There were two different kinds; the short-term kind they'd worked out how to make first, the kind Yukito took in privacy before each meal, and the slow-acting kind he gave Yukito every day before he went to sleep.

"Okay," he said. He reached up and took down one of the vials, then snagged a small grey plastic device from the desk next to the fridge. "Let's take a fingerstick reading and we'll sort this all out. Next time you ought not to skip lunch, Yukito, it can be quite dangerous -"

Fai paused. Yukito was sitting hunched forward, his arms folded around himself; he glanced up slowly and sighed. "I know," he said. "I see you three times a day. You make this for me -" he waved a hand, indicating the vial and the glucometer in Fai's palm, then broke off and hunched in on himself. "Is it worth it?"

"Are you implying you want me to stop treating you?" Fai asked, caught off-guard.

Yukito swallowed, his adam's apple bobbing. "I don't know. Maybe."

Fai frowned. "What brought this on?"

"Today, in class. We were talking about population control, sustainability and the crops we're growing - about how if there are too many of us, we'll all have less to eat. All the students have jobs - we can't afford to let anyone be a burden, not even children..." Yukito looked at his hands, and said in a low voice, "How long does it take you and Saiga to make my insulin?"

Truth be told, Fai didn't count. They did it in stages, anyway, and Saiga did most of the work; Subaru ligated the fresh pancreases Kurogane brought them and cut up the old batch; Saiga mixed up water and salts and submerged the bits of pancreas in them and then put them in the freezer, and it was Saiga who watched over them like a hawk while Fai got on with other work, waiting, waiting for them to be just the right stage of half-frozen that they could be filtered...

"A few hours," he said, which was underselling it, but he didn't want Yukito sitting there blaming himself. It wasn't his fault he had diabetes. "It doesn't matter. I'm here to heal, alright? I don't mind -"

"We're on short rations as of the week after next," Yukito said. "Harvest is nearly over. We don't have much and we have to get through the winter on it. Everyone is going to be missing meals; nobody else is going to need _treatment_ because of it."

"No... Yukito-san, where did this come from?" Fai demanded, uneasily.

Yukito sighed. "Class debate. Sakura said it was society's job to protect its weak and vulnerable. That's just like her, don't you think? She's very kind. Ryuuo said that the long-term sick, the ones who will never, ever be cured, who drain more from the village than they contribute, should be made comfortable and then - the exact words he used were 'let go,' which sounds terribly like firing someone rather than outright euthanasia, but then again, most of these children barely remember the world before the first storm. All they know of changing careers is Kazuhiko stepping down from being a hunter to spend more time with Oruha before she died, and - I'm sorry. I'm babbling, aren't I."

His hands were shaking.

Fai set the vial of valuable insulin down next to him on the treatment table. He could feel the tightness in his throat, clogging up his words; and for a moment he saw Kurogane last night, sword across his back and blood on his cheek, announcing that he would have to stay out hunting because Kamui _couldn't_ and it was necessary. Everyone contributed, Yukito wasn't wrong; even the smallest children swept ash out of the streets and mucked out the animals. Sakura collected scrap metal for her brother and helped Tomoyo, who sewed; Syaoran ran storm forecasts to each person in the village. Ryuuo kept his solar panels clean so the clinic got that tiny extra bit of power. Watanuki cooked - Doumeki helped the salvage team pick over the carcasses of the buildings beyond the walls for supplies... "You're the teacher," he said to Yukito. "You make sure they don't grow up ignorant. You make sure we remember things as a society. Isn't that something?"

"I never even graduated college," Yukito replied, somewhat despondently. "I was studying for my final exams when the first storm came. Anybody could do what I do, couldn't they?"

"They love _you_ ," Fai said.

Yukito swallowed. "I'm... expensive. If To-ya knew, he would... He's protective. If I don't tell him - if something happens to me - he won't know. It'll be easier for him, won't it?" He looked up, desperation in his eyes; Fai unthinkingly took a step away. "Tell me I'm right to keep this to myself."

He was looking at Fai pleadingly, and Fai could feel his own heart thudding in his chest. _Don't,_ he thought, frantically. _Don't put this on me. I don't want to have to choose. I won't, I_ won't.

"I think," Fai said, pulling up his dealing-with-patients smile, the one he practised many a time in front of the mirror - warm and reassuring and friendly, one designed to make sick people feel better and scared people less frightened - "I think that the choice belongs with you, Yukito-san. I'm just your doctor. I'm here to make you better, okay?"

Some of the frenetic light in Yukito's eyes faded, and his posture seemed to slump. "I see," he said, sounding thoughtful. "I... see."

"Now -" Fai held out the glucometer, its strip already loaded. They didn't have many of those left either, and when they ran out Fai had no idea what would happen. "Shall we check your glucose levels?"

Yukito didn't say anything, but he didn't resist when Fai took his hand, and his only reaction to the needle piercing the skin of his fingertip was a terse flinch. Fai turned away from him as he waited for the glucometer to spit up its results, not wanting to see the indecision on Yukito's face. _I can't help you,_ he thought, remembering how he had run out on Kamui and Subaru earlier; _I can't even help myself._

_Snickt, snickt, snickt._


	3. One big silence

It wasn't like the motor engine was particularly quiet. Kurogane had always been a light sleeper, a fact he could attribute to his childhood; and living in the now of this village had just heightened that reflex. It had been six months since ash beasts had gotten over the walls, sneaking in due to complacent guards, and if not for Kurogane's ability to process 'danger' sounds and 'normal' sounds in the midst of his deepest dream-cycle, more people probably would have died.

So when the sound came, a throaty purr reverberating through the narrow high walls, he was swinging his legs over the side of the bed before he was even fully awake. And that was as it should be. A hunter couldn't afford any less.

Kurogane's room was on the top floor of the house; it was an older one, built to stand, and it creaked like a tea-clipper in a storm pretty much all the time. All he'd done since claiming it was toss out what of the old occupants' furniture he couldn't use, like the child's crib in the room with the ducks and geese painted on the walls, and he refused to dwell on where that child might have gone. Like most of them, really; if you thought about it it threatened to overwhelm you.

One of the best parts about the house was the large window in the bedroom. He'd installed heavy bars over it, instead of shutters like everyone else. The downside to this was that it made the house look forbidding. The upside was that even during an ash storm, there was _some_ light coming from outside. Now he made his way over to the window, moving with quick, practised steps across the old floorboards out of habit, and leaned toward the glass, shielding his eyes with one palm to look out over the wall. There was a puff of dust in the distance, travelling along the road between the hill, past the toppled tree trunks and along the helpful pathway of shovelled ash.

Ah, he thought. That time again.

He barely remembered the New Year's celebrations of his childhood country, adults giving the children presents wrapped handsomely in silk and gold leaf. That had ended many many years before even the First storm; ended when his parents fled their home with him still small enough to fit in his father's strong arms. Ended when his father shoved him in the backseat of the jeep and clambered into the driver's side with none of his usual charm and easy humour; his mother, trembling in the passenger side, their passports clasped in her pale hands.

(Her face tipped toward his father, her dark hair loose and unbound for the first time Kurogane could recall; unbrushed and no longer shining. Her face, troubled. "This is going -"

And his father, tense and tight-lipped but not unsympathetic: "I know, my love. We have to.")

He remembered the cold Winter festival of the northern country they'd fled to better, however; the red and white winter spirit who brought gifts for well-behaved little boys and girls - Kurogane had never been under any illusions and knew quite well that it was the parents who provided - and the general nauseatingly _happy_ tint to the air, people grimly determined to buckle down, shut up and be _nice_.

It wasn't something he'd ever really given much of a damn about, and apparently he wasn't the only one; so many of the old holidays had been lost in the village, the survivors fighting too hard to keep food in their bellies to worry about... tinsel and dead trees in the living room and checking to see which one of the eight thousand bulbs in the string of electric lights was causing the whole chain to fail to light up properly. That stuff fell by the wayside. Perhaps it wasn't surprising that something else would creep in to fill that celebratory void, however.

He wasn't the first person out on the street - that was Sakura, wearing her ash storm cloak and looking positively giddy, standing hopefully by her front door and staring up at the hills. Her brother joined her soon enough, still wearing his thick spark-proof apron; then Yukito - Syaoran - Tomoyo, Kendappa; the streets began to fill up as the purring engines drew closer. By the time Kurogane had pulled on a set of clothes and jogged down to the street, practically the whole village was thronging in the village centre, around Arashi and Sorata's weather tower, although they'd left a path for the motorbikes to come in. Fuuma was up on the wall, hunkered down with one of the few pairs of binoculars they had left; they all knew who it was, but they waited for his thumbs up before the gates were pulled open and the crowd practically surged onto their tiptoes, each trying to see over the other.

Kurogane rolled his eyes and glanced around, looking for a less packed spot, and saw one by one of the rear legs of the watchtower. It took a while to shove his way out of the throng, even with his height and muscle advantage. The survivors were hyped up and eager - this was kind of a big deal, rare and special, and not inclined to give up their spot even in the face of Kurogane's elbow (or Kurogane's elbow in their faces, depending on how much he liked them, which since he could be somewhat of a misanthrope was almost always _not very much_ ). The spot by the watchtower was empty at least, and he leaned against one of the tower legs with his arms folded over his chest, one ankle hooked negligently over the other. His height helped. From here he could make out Tomoyo next to Sakura, looking positively joyous with anticipation.

The sight was enough to let the edge of his mouth curve up in a smile, only to fall flat when beside him a light, amused voice said, "Kuro-festival is excited too?"

"Shouldn't you be up there getting first in line for some fucking hairspray or something?" Kurogane said, glaring at the blond. Fai was just standing there, balancing lightly on the balls of his feet, hands tucked into his armpits; his blue eyes were lidded and his sly expression didn't so much as flicker at Kurogane's words.

"Does Kuro-judge want me to look pretty for him? Why, I _never_ ," Fai said, batting his eyelashes at Kurogane. He looked back out over the crowd as the bikes finally chugged through the gates, bouncing and swaying and the low-bearing carts behind them jolting ponderously over the rough ground.

Kurogane didn't dignify that with so much as a grunt. He glared daggers at the bikes, his jaw working, and hoped, as the shorter of the riders dismounted the bike by tossing a leg over its seat, that the irritating bastard would take the hint and _fuck off_. Things seldom went that way.

"Kamui-kun checked himself out this morning," Fai said.

He grunted. "Did you take the goddamn tube out of his chest first?"

"No. I thought it'd make an interesting conversation piece."

Kurogane glared at him.

"Of course I took it out, Kuro-silly, it came out _yesterday_ ," Fai said, smirking that fucking _annoying_ smirk. "I wanted to keep him in for a few more days to recover, but Fuuma-san turned up and said it was time for him to come home."

Kurogane raised an eyebrow. Open gestures of affection didn't sound much like Fuuma. "Did he have a concussion or something?"

"No, he said the house was a disaster and Kamui should probably come home before it got any worse. Kamui-kun, of course, demanded to know just what Fuuma-san had done to 'his' house; and after that, it was almost impossible to keep him in."

"Yeah," said Kurogane. "Figures. They're both idiots."

"If you say so," Fai said. He was wearing his distant, neutrally polite smile, and his eyes were on the motorists even now killing their vehicles' engines and stripping off riding gear. "Excuse me, Kuro-insult; I should probably go check on them -"

Kurogane grabbed his shoulder and hauled him back as the crowd called out to the riders; Yuzuriha pulled off her helmet and grinned at them, raising a hand and waving to be met with a chorus of greetings. "Let them hand out their goods and take a nap. They've got no visible injuries. We'd've seen it by now."

Fai frowned. "I have to do my job, Kuro-sharp, and that means -"

He sighed deeply and cuffed the idiot on the shoulder; not hard, most of him rebelled at the thought of socking a civilian one even as his conscious brain whispered that Fai was almost definitely not a civilian. "Let them do their thing," he said. "Just shut up for once and let 'em get on with it."

Kusanagi pulled off his motorbike helmet too and grinned sheepishly at the noise the crowd made. His grizzled but good-natured face seemed to have acquired a few more creases since the two of them had left last, but his steps as he walked around the bike to the cart were as even and quick as ever.

Each cart had been more or less improvised out of a spare dirt bike, some bicycles and a wheelbarrow by Touya some time ago. They were unstable, heavy and unwieldy; but with them, Kusanagi and Yuzuriha could fetch a whole lot more supplies back than they could by relying on whatever they could tie onto their bikes. There were two carts, heaped high with mysterious supplies and covered with tarps, lashed into place with rope and what looked to be recycled bicycle chains. When Kusanagi undid the bindings on the first cart, the villagers collectively leaned forward and let out an _ah!_ noise in delight; and despite himself Kurogane felt the corner of his mouth quirk again.

Most items Kusanagi and Yuzuriha fetched were practical things the village couldn't make. They roamed far out from the village, searching for anything that might be useful; ammunition for their guns, petrol for the clinic generator, condiments like salt and sugar. Cloth, seeds, disinfectant, batteries (although less and less of those; most of the ones they found recently were corroded or dead), bandages, pills, paper, tools - anything that could be stuffed into the carts or strapped to the bikes. But sometimes they fetched luxury items back; soap, candles, hair conditioner and feminine hygiene products and, that most blessed of grails nowadays, _toilet paper_. It was, Kurogane thought, quite a change in circumstances that _that_ particular item was the most eagerly sought-after gift.

The majority of the goods went to specific people the two scavengers thought could make most use of them - hence Tomoyo had been the one to receive the hand crank-powered sewing machine, Fai got the occasional scrounged medical item, and the petrol went firmly into the village's communal storage depot where they kept the extra food and filtered water.

Today was much the same; Kurogane watched as swaths of cloth - blankets, curtains, even some old clothes - were handed over to Tomoyo, as a toolbox made its way to Kazuhiko, a box of shotgun shells to Fuuma - pens and notebooks for Sorata and Arashi; the debris level of the cart declined as items were given out and then it was down to the petrol and the treats and then, _finally_ , Kusanagi reached into the bottom of the cart and came back with a red box stamped with a white serpent. Beside Kurogane Fai - who had begun slouching as time passed - straightened up with a smile.

"Oh, how wonderful," he said. "I'm sure there'll be something -"

"I vetted the kit," Kusanagi said. "I was army, I know there's expiration dates on half the stuff in a first aid kit. We went through a busted-up hospital down by the sea shore anyway, grabbed what we could and stuffed it in there."

"You did?" Fai balanced the base of the red first aid kit against his hip and brushed the fingers of his right hand briefly over the medical serpent; Kurogane reached out and took it off him with a sigh, holding it steady so he could snap open the catches. Inside there were rolls of bandages and bottles of pills, all jumbled together in one messy heap. Fai snatched up one of the bottles and turned it in his hands, peering at the label, then smiled. "Oxycodone-paracetamol hybrid. Fantastic, I've been running low on moderate painkillers. Thank you, Kusanagi-san."

"We also found this," Kusanagi said. He lifted the - now depleted - tarp on Yuzuriha's cart; she was leaning over her motorbike to watch them, elbows on the leather seat. As soon as the cover was lifted Yuzuriha's dog jumped out, looking disgruntled that its hiding place had been disturbed; nobody paid it any mind, instead staring dubiously down at the bulky wad of fabric underneath the tarp.

"I don't need any curtains," Fai said, sounding perplexed.

"Idiot," said Kurogane. He reached out and dragged the heavy package onto its side to reveal that it had been tied tightly around some plastic bottles. "It's just padding."

"Antiseptics," Yuzuriha said cheerfully. "We also found some weird glass needle-looking things. We didn't know what they were, so we wrapped them up in a blue towel and put them in the middle of all that lot."

Fai reached in amidst the bottles of antiseptic and pulled the blue towel out, unfolding it to reveal twelve devices that looked very much like hypodermic needles with blunt needleless ends. "Ah," he said happily. "Adrenaline autoinjectors! Kuro-lug, get the antiseptics for me, I need to store this stuff right away. Thank you!"

This last was said to Yuzuriha, who smiled and waved, and Kusanagi, who nodded. Kurogane glared at him. "Why do I have to get your stuff for you?"

"Because you're here and there's no more goodies to be collected, so what else is Kuro-malicious loitering for?"

Kurogane growled. The worst part was, he didn't know how to answer the damn question.

"I need the two of you to come around tomorrow for a checkup," Fai was saying. "Did you hurt yourselves or experience any illnesses on this last outing you might still be recovering from?"

Yuzuriha shook her head, but Kusanagi said, "We got attacked by a bunch of ash beasts about a week ago. It would have been an ambush if we didn't have Inuki; he started going berserk about twenty minutes before the storm started. We scared them off -"

"Oh yeah," Yuzuriha said. She laughed. "I got a slash to the arm. It's already healed up, I know how to dress a wound, but _he_ worries -"

Kusanagi smiled. "You _are_ my partner," he said.

Fai was watching them with a curious expression on his face, his mouth frozen in that inane smile he wore by default but lines of tension faint but clear around his eyes. When the two scavengers stopped their banter and glanced over at him his whole face changed until it could almost have looked sincere. "Well, you two should go home and rest," he said firmly. "That's doctor's orders. And Yuzuriha-chan should drink some milk!"

"Ugh," she complained. "Say what you will about a scavenger's life... I'd rather have the ash beasts in the wilderness than goat's milk."

"Good for your bones," Fai said helpfully. "Now go on, go home and sleep. I think the two of you need that more than anything. I'm sure someone will take your bikes somewhere safe for the night. Once Kuro-lazy moves that cargo for me~"

"What the hell are you going to carry while I'm doing your legwork for you?" Kurogane snapped, and Fai smiled that razor smile and held up the towel full of epipens and the first aid kit.

That figured, Kurogane thought. It wasn't that Fai was lazy - but he liked people to think that he was. It was the easy way to excuse his distance from the other villagers. Kurogane bent down and picked up the awkward, heavy collection of bottles, jostling it awkwardly in his arms until he found the right manner in which to carry it, and then Fai patted his shoulder in an absent sort of way. Kurogane shrugged him away irritably, which only made the annoying bastard chuckle.

The sky was a thick grey as they made their way back toward the clinic, although not with ash; a fat raindrop smacked against Kurogane's cheek as they passed Oruha's house. The door was closed firmly and a note pinned to it: _Quiet please, she's sleeping._

"Good," Fai said softly, gazing at it. "I'm glad she's able."

Kurogane snorted. "What, you out of tranquillisers?"

"She doesn't want them," Fai said in a low voice. "They make her feel terrible when she wakes up. She's sick enough as it is."

In the weak light of the overcast sky, he wasn't even pretending to smile. Those fine blond eyebrows were drawn together tightly - worried, Kurogane thought; he was actually fucking concerned. Go figure that the only person in the village he could be even _slightly_ emotionally honest about liking was the dying woman with maybe three months left to go.

Whatever. The weaselly bastard had made it quite plain he didn't want Kurogane prying, and Kurogane was tired of trying and getting nowhere. They were coming up on the clinic now, ducking down the side of Kamui's house and cutting through what had once, before the first storm, been the garden belonging to whoever had lived in Touya and Yukito's house. There was nothing to it now but dirt and a wild blackberry bush, tangled and thorny and contrary, growing stubbornly despite the ash-poisoned soil and colder air. Fai's cheeks were pink and his hair was slipping out of his ponytail, and Kurogane caught himself wondering why he gave a damn.

"It's good that we have the epipens," Fai said, out of the blue. Kurogane just grunted, not phased by the non sequitur; Fai liked filling silences, it was one of the few things he knew about the man. "The contents will have expired, so right now they're useless, but we'll need samples to reverse-engineer."

"Don't you need the adrenaline to fill them?"

"Of course. But we should be able to synthesize that - it's a hormone, and we've already..." Fai trailed off, then cleared his throat. "Well. We've made progress with hormones."

Kurogane snorted. "Anything to do with those organs you make me fetch for you?"

"Kind of," said Fai. He smiled, glossy and unnatural as ever; his expression was so opaque it was worthless. He set his shoulder against the clinic door and shoved, holding it open for Kurogane as he made his way inside. "Just put the antiseptics on the counter, Subaru and I will take a closer look at them later. I want to go through these pills first."

"I don't care," Kurogane warned, but Fai gave no indication that he had heard him. He let go of the door and put the first aid kit on the desk, running his fingers briefly over the rod-and-snake symbol that had always meant _medicine_ , before snapping open the catches and lifting the lid.

"Thank you for your help, Kuro-tan," he said absently, clearly by way of dismissal. Kurogane snorted. "I'll just be... going through these... ooh, cortisol -"

"Why do you never even try to use healing magic?" Kurogane asked, and watched his words sink in by the stiffening of the idiot's spine. "That idiot in the weather tower still tries to use his weather-witchcraft. Sometimes he even gets results. Not good ones, but _he_ doesn't have the kind of power you do."

"Sorata-san's magic isn't quite like mine," Fai said in a low voice. "The first storm didn't affect him quite as badly as it did for other schools."

"That makes no sense," said Kurogane.

"It doesn't have to. It's still true."

"It's fucking stupid," Kurogane argued. "Maybe he can't do much with his magic except predict changes in wind direction, but yours is more important. If you have it. Why not at least try? That woman with the cancer could probably use some pain relief -"

Fai slammed the bottle of cortisol on the desk hard enough that Kurogane stopped and narrowed his eyes at him, studying the tension in his shoulders. "Never," Fai said. "Never, _ever_ say that outside of here. I won't have the rumour mill picking things up and giving people expectations I cannot live up to. Don't you think I would if I could?"

"Why can't you?"

"Because it doesn't _work_ like that! Weather-crafters have always been able to work with the wild magic, it's war mages and healing mages who need the power lines - the power lines the first storm _broke_. I can't do magic. It'd just blow up in my face and injure me. Besides, why does it matter?"

"Hnn," Kurogane said. There was still colour in Fai's cheeks, but now it was a flush of anger rather than the cold. This was a level of unprecedented honesty from the idiot. "It matters. if you have healing magic and you're not using them for some stupid pointless fucking reason then - then what is the point of you? You're only as good as your equipment. Most of us know to keep wounds clean and wash our hands."

Fai said nothing for several seconds, then he let out a sigh. "You're back to insinuating that I'm not a doctor; that I'm perhaps a physician who's afraid of... what? Receiving slightly less prestige? Would this help?"

He was unbuttoning his shirt; Kurogane took a hasty step back. Was he - was he really? Oh, _no_. "Idiot, what - what are you doing? I'm not -"

"Here, Kuro-sceptic," Fai said, with some scorn, and turned his back to Kurogane, letting the collar of the shirt slip past his shoulder. He wore a white sleeveless vest underneath it, but the edges of the tattoo were visible where they traced across his shoulderblades; helpfully he lifted the vest top so Kurogane could see more of it... not that he was looking. Kurogane swallowed. "Know what that is?"

"... Yeah."

All Witchblood were tattooed when their powers first developed. The rare healing mages and war mages were tattooed with the King's family sigil, the phoenix rising in thick black lines over their backs. The tattoos were done with a special ink in order to keep their shape as their bearers grew, for most Witchblood were tattooed in their pre-teens. Everyone knew that.

"I was twelve," Fai said, watching Kurogane carefully over his own shoulder. "The head of the King's war-mage council himself put it on me. He said I joined a very small number of Witchblood with it; less than twenty five doctors and a lot fewer than ten war mages."

Kurogane _tched_ under his breath, folding his arms over his chest and looking away; for some reason the strong coarse ink of the tattoo's shape marching over Fai's pale skin irked him, as did the brazen way Fai just stood there showing off the skin of his back like it wasn't a big fucking deal. "Never understood why you lot agreed to that. It's slavery, you Witchblood agreed to be his _possessions_."

Fai snorted, pulling his shirt back up. "It's - it _was_ \- better than the alternative," he said. "At least in King Taishakuten's country we weren't unceremoniously hunted out of fear. Or burned at the stake."

There was no mistaking the jab in his last sentence. And there was also nothing Kurogane could say to refute it. It was canon doctrine in his home country that Witchblood would bring about the end of the world. Perhaps they'd been right. Nobody knew what had caused the first storm and the breaking of magic, but Kurogane was going to go out on a limb and assume it wasn't natural. "Does it matter?" he said, instead. "They're both dead now, my Emperor and your King. Whatever they did to your kind... that was in the past, and you shouldn't stick to it."

Fai's mouth twitched, but his eyes were cool. "Kuro-sama is such a philosopher! Who would ever have guessed," he chirped, and Kurogane snapped his gaze back to the idiot and _glared_.

"My mother was Witchblood in hiding," he growled, and watched as Fai's eyes widened, the pupils dilating in their sea of blue. "We fled to your precious King's country when I was a kid. I know. But get over it. It was then and this is now."

Fai was watching him with no expression at all on his face. Kurogane wasn't sure whether or not that was worse than the stupid lying smile. He sighed and turned away, pushing the clinic door open; the storm clouds were thick and choking black on the horizon and he could _feel_ Fai's eyes on his back. He tugged his filtermask up around his mouth. "Listen, whatever you were, whatever happened - it doesn't matter. It has nothing to do with the way the world is now."

"Oh, Kuro-ash," Fai said softly behind him, coming to take the weight of the door from him, "It has everything to do with the way the world is now."

The door clicked shut with a sort of finality, and Kurogane hesitated on the threshold for a second - but just a second. How typical of the idiot, he thought. At least he knew that Fai had definitely some magic now, although he was still no closer to understanding why it bugged him that Fai was so mopey.

* * *

_"There are some things," said Ashura, still and calm as untouched water, his hands folded one atop the other over the table, "That not even healing mages can do."_

_"Like what?"_

_"There are many illnesses that cannot be cured. Healing magic cannot, for instance, regrow completely a missing organ or limb. It cannot entirely cure complex illnesses such as cancer or even diabetes, although the symptoms can be waylaid. But, most critical of all, healing magic cannot be used to return someone from the dead."_

_"Not ever?"_

_"Not ever, Fai."_

"Fai? Fai, you have to wake up."

Fai opened one blurry eye to see Subaru leaning over him, one hand on his shoulder. "What," he said, muzzily. "What time'sit."

"It's ten-thirty," said Subaru. "You've been asleep for an hour and a half - I'm sorry, Fai, but Sakura is here, something has happened to Yukito -"

That blasted sleep - and his dream - right out of his mind. Fai sat up sharply, fisting one hand in the sheets for balance. "Like what?"

"She said he's acting funny," said Subaru, looking helpless in the face of this frankly useless information. "She's quite scared, Fai -"

"Get my black bag," Fai said, throwing the covers back. "Load it with the syringe in the black case and two vials from the fridge in treatment room two labelled _glycerin_ \- I'll meet you out front -"

Subaru nodded once and fled, and Fai rolled out of bed, springing to his feet. His clothes were scattered over the floor. He'd been awake for thirty hours at this stage, and by the time he returned to the clinic dawn had broken and he'd been too damn tired to make even the token effort to launch them into the laundry basket. He stuffed his legs impatiently into his trousers, trying at the same time to pull on his polo-neck; his jacket was on his desk with his filtermask lying atop it. He pulled them both on as quick as he could, and he was still stamping into his boots when he hobbled out to the waiting room. Sakura was standing by the door, looking pale. There was ash on her cloak and on the edges of her hair.

"Hey," Fai said to her gently. "What's wrong with Yukito-san?"

She glanced up at him; there were tear-tracks wet and shining on her cheeks. "He's _sick_ , doctor - he keeps throwing up, and he's not making any sense, and his breathing is really - Touya said to fetch you, I'm, I'm - I'm -"

"It's okay, Sakura-chan," said Fai softly. He straightened up as the sound of footsteps heralded Subaru's arrival; the young man hurried into the waiting room with his bag. "I think I know what's wrong. I'll see to it, okay? Stay here with Subaru."

"You don't need me?"

"No."

"It's storming," Subaru said, anxiously. "Have you got your mask? I could lend you mine -"

"No. I found it yesterday. Look after Sakura-chan!"

The wind was biting when he stepped outside, and it even though he wore both mask and goggles he had to take a moment to orient himself. The ash was being flung practically into his face, as if by a spiteful child; the morning light was weak and dull behind the clouds, and it was a good thing Touya and Yukito lived only up the street. He lowered his head and pulled his hood up, holding it in place with one hand, and trotted as fast as he could with the wind in his face and the ash clogging his vision. His bag suddenly felt heavy over his shoulder.

Confusion, dehydration, vomiting; he knew what it meant and he'd expected to have to deal with it at some point. He forced himself to speed up. It was an emergency, and it was a good thing they had fresh insulin. He'd have to find out what had happened. There - that was their house - the back door ought to be locked during a storm in case the ash beasts got outside, but it opened under his hand, and he staggered in bringing a gust of the ash inside, already scanning the property for his patient...

Touya's voice floated out of the living room, sounding tense, urgent. "In here!"

Yukito was laid out on the sofa, a bucket next to him for obvious purposes. He looked pretty bad, but he still lifted his head when Fai went to his knees next to the sofa, beside Touya who was holding a cool rag against his forehead.

"He said he felt nauseous about ten o'clock last night," Touya was saying, an edge to his voice; "We had meat stew for dinner but me and Sakura are fine, I don't think it's food poisoning - he keeps slurring his speech and he says he's thirsty but he can't keep any water down, and I keep having to help him to the bathroom -"

"Okay," Fai said. He shrugged the strap of his bag over his head and fixed his doctor smile on as he rooted quickly through its contents. There was Yukito's glucometer... "Did he skip a meal or eat more than he usually does?"

"No," said Touya. "Wait. Yes, Kusanagi got us some sugar. Sakura made a dessert from it and the spare flour. Could it be bad or something?"

"No," Fai said. He pricked Yukito's finger with the stick and sighed as he waited for the blood sugar reading; Touya was watching him with a mixture of distrust and desperation and the secret was pretty much blown, wasn't it? Wasn't it time to face the consequences? If he just shut up and treated Yukito... He didn't care about them, he _couldn't_. Telling Touya was surely the most prudent option. "He'll be okay."

"What's wrong with him?" Touya sounded bewildered, and Fai watched as his hand moved, almost without conscious effort, brushing Yukito's bangs away from his face. "He was fine yesterday morning..."

 _I don't care about them,_ Fai thought desperately. _I'm just the doctor. It's time to get it out there._ The consequences could wait; as Yukito's doctor he could no longer justify keeping his condition secret in the middle of a crash. "He has diabetes, he just needs some insulin and maybe an IV depending on his fingerstick reading here."

Icy silence from Touya, and then, " _What_?"

"Type one diabetes," Fai said.

"I heard you," Touya snapped, "I have ears. I meant _since when_?"

"Since he was twelve," said Fai. "At least, that's what he told me. He's been managing it since his diagnosis, and he told me pretty quickly after the storm."

Touya was staring at him, anger growing across his face like a shadow. "That was five years ago," he said. "You've been keeping it secret for five years?"

Fai licked his lips. The glucometer reading was done; he tugged it free and raised it to eyelevel, lips moving as he calculated how much insulin Yukito needed. "He asked me to," he said, because he couldn't stay silent or ignore the question. "He didn't want special treatment because of his condition -"

"His condition requires special treatment!" Touya yelled, and Fai flinched. "That's why they call it a _condition_! Who else knows?"

"Saiga-san and Subaru-san know someone in the village is diabetic, but they don't know who," said Fai. "Touya-san, please, I have an obligation -"

Touya snarled. "Don't hide behind patient confidentiality," he said, scathingly. "That'd be just like you. You're an expert at disowning responsibility. Do you even have insulin?"

He swallowed. "Yes. We've been synthesizing it from ash beast pancreases."

"Incredible," said Touya. "You can do that but you can't tell me that Yuki is - that Yuki has diabetes." He leaned forward, touching the backs of his fingers to Yukito's cheek; his mouth was pulled in a furious line. "He's going to be okay?"

"Yeah," Fai said. His hands were steady as he reached into his bag; the vials of insulin were in the inside pocket, and Yukito's syringe came easily to his fingers. It didn't take him long to prep the injection. Touya watched him administer it, eyes narrowed and cold. "He should start picking up now. He'll need to be moved to the clinic after the storm ends, we need to put him on an iv and monitor him to make sure it sticks."

Touya grunted. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"He asked me not to," Fai said. The excuse was beginning to sound thinner and thinner the more he thought about it. He placed the needle back into its case and slid it back into his bag.

"Yeah, that's what I don't get." Touya's adam's apple bobbed as he glanced over at Yukito, and there was a hint of something in his eyes that wasn't anger - affection. Fai remembered that feeling. "Why didn't he want anyone to know? What was he worried about?"

Fai stood up. "He said he was afraid of being a burden -"

"You already _said_ that -"

"- I wasn't finished. The food situation is going to be hard in the future. He was worried... he was worried that he was a drain on the village resources." Fai sighed. "He said to one point that he felt like he was a burden, and that it would be easier to let him die -"

He never got to finish the sentence. Touya's left hook knocked him flat on his arse, the impact against his jaw forcing his mouth closed so fast he bit his tongue and drew blood. Shocked, he glanced up at the metalworker from the floor; Touya was glaring at him, his fist bunched up like he wanted to take another swing, but when he spoke his voice was oddly calm: "Don't you fucking _dare_."

"I didn't," Fai started to say. _I didn't say that, he did; I don't agree, please don't be mad at me._

( _"We didn't do anything to you! Please stop, you're hurting him!"_ )

"Shut up," Touya said in a low, ugly voice. "Shut up. Do you think we're all stupid or something? We've noticed how aloof you act. You're the only one left in the village who still uses the old honorifics. You _don't get_ to decide who lives and who dies; you're not better than us just because you went to the damn College."

Fai stared at him.

( _"They'll know! Fai, they'll know, they'll see straight through it -"_

Snickt, snickt, snickt.

 _"No, they won't."_ )

"I didn't - I'm not, I - I don't think that," Fai said, aware he was babbling - anything, to drown out _that voice_. "I'm, I'm just the doctor -"

"Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. That's what helps you look down at us," Touya growled. "We've all noticed it. You think you're so smart and so out of reach."

Fai felt nauseous suddenly, his limbs kitten-weak and unresponsive. His stomach was a tight roiling thing. _We've all noticed it._ Kurogane must have been the only one who cared so little for social norms that he had no problem confronting Fai; if they all knew - if they _knew_ and, and thought about it for long then they would know - _know_... "I don't," he said, but his voice sounded weak and numb to his own ears, and it didn't abate Touya's thunderous expression at all.

"Yuki matters to me," Touya continued. "He _matters_. If he - if he -" He trailed off, raising his hands to cover his face, and after a moment his shoulders shook. Fai swallowed heavily, trapped there listening Touya breaking down in tears, Yukito still pale and limp on the sofa. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know what to _do_ , although most of him wanted to be out of here, some childish instinct to flee. He had some idea that any attempt to offer Touya comfort would be rejected quite thoroughly.

 _As it should be,_ he thought. _You should have told him. You shouldn't have hid behind patient confidentiality._ If he had told Touya and Sakura they would've helped Yukito manage his diet; he would not have to worry about eating the wrong things or not eating at all. He had chosen inaction as the easiest option, the one that involved less caring, and now... and now Yukito was pale and still and Touya was hurting because of it, and what kind of healer was he?

( _Ashura, his long soft hair swept back from his face, glasses balanced low on the bridge of his nose; "You are exempt from a great number of things ordinary physicians must face. You do not have to swear the Hippocratic Oath. You need not wonder quite so much about prosecution. But you must always remember that what you do, you do because the King commands."_ )

A voice broke in on his concentration then, nervous and unsure. "Um."

Sakura was standing in the doorway, her fingers clutching the frame loosely. She'd obviously just come in from the clinic. Ash was still drifting from her cloak to the ground.

"Sakura-chan," Fai said, quietly, then winced. _You're the only one left in the village who still uses the old honorifics._

Sakura was watching him, her green eyes quiet and still. There was no need to ask; she'd obviously heard everything. Fai swallowed, picking himself up from the floor; Touya had sunk to the couch, sitting on the very edge by Yukito's knees.

"The storm's almost stopped," Sakura said. She glanced at Yukito, her face softening with warmth, and then back at Fai. She was looking at him warily, like he was some stranger wearing his own face. He might well be. _I could ask her to call me Yuui,_ Fai thought, faintly hysterical, and the thought made him even more nauseous. "Is he going to be alright?"

"He'll be fine, Sakura-chan," Fai said. He forced himself to smile for her, but unlike before she didn't return it. "Is Subaru-kun with you? Yukito-san needs to go to the clinic for some treatment."

"He's just coming," she said. "Should I go fetch some people to help us move him? Kurogane is on patrol, but Fuuma and Kusanagi are in."

Fai ran a hand over his face. "Yes," he said, hollowly. Touya wasn't sobbing any more, but his shoulders were still shaking. Yukito remained very still. "Yes, do that. Thank you."

"Okay." She turned away, then paused. "Touya," she said, sharply. "Yukito needs you, stop being so silly."

Touya moved his hands. "What would you know, Monster," he said in a choked voice. The door clicked open then and Subaru pushed his way inside, pulling off his hood and shaking ash out of his hair. Touya glanced at him without any apparent hostility.

"Is he going to be okay?" Subaru asked, after a brief glance around the room.

"He needs an IV to treat his dehydration," Fai said. Suddenly he couldn't be near these people; Sakura's soft, judging gaze was the worst he'd ever received. "Listen, I... I have to, to go see another patient, can you sort out the IV? Sakura will be back soon with some people to help get him to the clinic."

"Oh," said Subaru, sounding surprised. "Yes, I can do that. What other patient? Oruha?"

"Yes," Fai said, clinging gratefully to the name. "Yes, I need to see Ora."

Touya made a small noise of contempt, but remained otherwise quiet, and Fai needed to be _gone_. He picked up his bag, slinging it over his shoulder, and pulled his mask on. "Listen," he said, grabbing Subaru's shoulder - "Yukito has type one diabetes, he needs to be monitored. I... I have things to do, but I keep his treatment file in my sleeping room in my top drawer. Saiga also knows how to administer any medicine he might need."

Subaru's eyes widened. "That explains the pancreases," he said, thoughtfully. He crossed the room. "Okay, I'll look over him. You go see Oruha, I'll see you soon."

"Yeah," Fai said. He couldn't meet any of their eyes; instead he pushed the door open and escaped the heavy, angry atmosphere of the house to the light ashfall that was the tail-end of the storm. He needed to talk to someone, and he was glad it was going to be Oruha; she had a way of putting him at ease, like he could be something close to honest with her. He tugged his hood up and his goggles down, and just stood for a moment, feeling the stinging autumn air on his skin, cold and orienting.

Then he put his head down and started walking.

Oruha's home was dark and silent when he got there, the shutters up tight, which wasn't really a surprise. Normally Kazuhiko kept the shutters open so the light could enter, but it was the first storm of the day. Chances were he'd lit candles inside. Fai let himself in through the back door, stamping ash and mud off his boots onto the carpet, and pushed open the door from the kitchen to the hall, where he froze.

Kazuhiko was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking what smelled strongly like potato moonshine from an unlabelled bottle. He had his back to Fai, but his glasses were resting on the table next to him, and Fai suddenly had a terrible feeling.

"Morning," Kazuhiko said. His voice was measured and even, but there was a note to it that Fai hadn't heard before. "I heard the yelling from Touya's house. Something happen?"

"Yukito was ill," said Fai. "Is Ora awake?"

Kazuhiko's throat worked. "No."

Fai said, carefully, "Should I wait?"

The other man breathed out slowly. "Not much point," he said, meditatively. "She died an hour ago."

There was a ringing in his ears. Strange, Fai thought, distantly, that he hadn't noticed it before. "She died?"

"That's generally what I mean when I say 'she died,' yeah," Kazuhiko said. His voice wasn't as steady as Fai had thought. "I woke up and she was alive, I went to fetch her morning pain medication and she wasn't." He set the bottle of moonshine down on the table with surprising delicacy. "I guess it was coming."

Fai said nothing.

"I really loved her," Kazuhiko said quietly. He looked down. "You ever met someone who just... fits like that?"

Fai didn't say anything to that, either, although he thought of two small hands entwined.

( _Snickt, snickt, snickt._ )

After the silence stretched out, Kazuhiko sighed and picked the bottle up again. "Look," he said, his voice somewhat stifled. "Thank you for all the stuff you did for her. You did the best you could., but I'd like to be alone now. She's beyond your help, so please, leave. I'll bring your equipment back to the clinic once I've..."

Fai swallowed. He could feel the blood rushing, pounding in his ears; a reminder that he was there, alive, and that Oruha... He'd thought she had a few more months at least. He'd been wrong. Kazuhiko covered his eyes with one hand, took another swig from the bottle. "Please go," he said, and Fai went.

He stood outside, frozen on Ora's... Kazuhiko's doorstep, for several long moments. The ash was almost done falling, just a light drizzle on the ground. People would be coming out to clear it up soon, bringing out their shovels and wheelbarrows, setting about their daily duties, and he was just stood there, on his own. It felt like standing on the edge of a precipice.

 _What is the point of you?_ Kurogane had asked. _You're only as good as your equipment. Most of us know to keep wounds clean and wash our hands._

He didn't have to go back to the clinic just yet. Subaru knew how to set up an IV. Saiga's house was close-by in case of incident.

 _You should tell someone about Ora,_ he thought, _So that she can be... so that she can be..._

His mind circled the word _buried_ , refusing to linger on it. A shiver coursed through his spine. Abruptly he remembered Ashura, standing tall and regal in his war mage uniform, his Ducal coronet worn high on his brow; _Your uncle will receive a traitor's burial. His body will not be consecrated. There will be no funeral and no blessing. If you wish to say your goodbyes, make them now, before we execute him; he has already been condemned, he is already a dead man._

( _"I have nothing to say to him."_ )

No. He couldn't go back to the clinic, not just yet. He glanced up the street, at the bulk of the wall and the tiny little exit gate, and without conscious effort, he found himself lifting his right foot and taking a step toward it. _I'll just go for a walk,_ he thought. _To clear my head. Outside the village, away from people._

That wasn't a bad idea. He shifted his doctor's bag on his shoulder and adjusted his hood, and without a destination in mind, made his way over to the wall. The light was improving as the clouds rolled away, and it didn't take much effort to push his thoughts out of his mind, to avoid thinking about Yukito in the clinic or Ora's body in her sickbed, about Touya's fury or how the whole village must have heard them fight...

_What is the point of you?_

( _Snickt, snickt, snickt._ )

He kept on walking. The wall was behind him, and then the treeline; he was following the same road Kusanagi and Yuzuriha had come in through. The forest stretched out on either side of him, still partly green and alive, but there were no birds in their branches. Just the sound of the wind in the leaves.

("Our lives are the only thing we can offer that is worth paying," Ashura had said. "And in the case of this man, that is our price. So be it.")

It wasn't fair, Fai thought, but then again it never had been. He should've been better. Tried harder, put up more of a fight, and then the world would have been alright, and he wouldn't be the one who survived, the miserable failure who flinched every time he heard the _snickt_ of some scissors.

 _I miss you,_ he thought, glancing up at the swaying, drooping branches of a willow tree. _I think maybe I'll never stop_.

He couldn't see the village from here. Fai sighed, running a hand through his hair, and shrugged to readjust the weight of his bag across his shoulders. He should probably turn around - was halfway through doing so when suddenly the thought occured to him:

_What if I just kept on going?_

The road stretched out before him, inviting in its smoothness. The morning ashfall had decorated it with an even layer, except at its edges where the trees had sheltered it. The clearing crew would be out soon with their bikes and shovels. If he was going to... keep walking, it would have to be through the forests.

_And where would I go?_

Did it even matter? He should never have been here, in this village, in this _time_ at all. Wouldn't have been, if he was brighter.

If he went back, there would be Kazuhiko; Touya, Yukito, the rumour mill. The disappointed look in Sakura's eyes. Kurogane, although he suspected Kurogane wouldn't treat him any different than the brusque, short-tempered way with which the big man interacted with him _now_ , and the thought surprised him by making him smile crookedly at thin air.

If he kept walking, he would probably die of dehydration, starvation, pneumoconiosis. Nobody who went out alone ever came back. That was why the hunters moved in twos. For a moment, he wavered.

( _I love you. This, I do for you._ )

Subaru and Saiga had it covered, he thought, and hated himself for the childish, cowardly thought; but that was the kind of man he was. He'd known it for as long as he'd lived.

He turned his back on the village and kept going.

* * *

Fuuma was halfway up a ladder when Kurogane got in, hammering inexpertly at the roof tiles and looking, if not confused, then certainly bewildered in a jovial manner. He had a huge bruise over one side of his face that he hadn't had when Kurogane had last seen him. Kendappa was leaning against the wall at the bottom of the ladder, looking sour, but when she saw him she nodded at him.

"There he is," she said. "Kurogane, tell Fuuma what you told me about the meeting yesterday."

Kurogane squinted up at the ladder. "This can't wait? I just got off patrol." He held up the wet, dripping sack by way of proof; blood was soaking through the bottom of the bag and mixing with the ash on the ground.

"If we let you go you'll go home and sleep, and then I'll be on patrol and it'll have to wait for ages. So. Tell him now."

Kurogane sighed. "It was that idiot from the east side again, the one who won't stop accusing the short bastard with black hair of stealing his stuff. He wanted a couple of us hunters to go around and 'deal with' the thief."

There was a pause while Fuuma worked out who Kurogane meant. "What did you say to that?" he called down eventually.

Kurogane snorted and said, candidly, "I told him to go fuck himself."

"Not surprised," Fuuma said, amused. He banged heavily on the roof aimlessly with the mallet and scowled when a tile slipped free and crashed to the ground a few inches away from Kendappa's foot. "This is harder than it looks when Kamui does it."

Kendappa snorted. "He's making you do the housework, huh?"

"He said if I didn't make myself useful in the next thirty seconds, he was going to hit me in the face with this mallet," Fuuma said. He peered down at them from the top of the ladder. "I said he looked cute when he was angry, he hit me in the face with the mallet. I suppose he did warn me."

"You can't get fairer than that," Kendappa agreed. "So what did that annoying bastard say about you refusing our services?"

"He whined. I said we're here to hunt the ash beasts, not act as some fucking police force, and if we are gonna act as a police force, who's going to be making the fucking laws and paying our wages?"

"I'm not joining any brand-new police," Fuuma said. "I was a car thief before the first storm."

Kendappa lifted her eyebrows. "Really? Operating out of the capital?"

"Yep."

"Ever steal a black Puma convertible from the east train station? Had a violin in the back seat?"

There was an awkward pause in which Fuuma's guilt became rather implicit.

"You bastard," Kendappa said, without heat. "I loved that car."

"It paid my rent for three months," Fuuma said.

"The violin or the car?"

"The car. The violin I kept until my neighbour broke it 'cos I was keeping him up practising. Sorry."

"Well, it wasn't my violin," Kendappa said, with a philosophical shrug. She lifted a hand and waved down the street at the clinic as its doors opened. "Hey, Subaru."

"Hi," Subaru said. He glanced at them briefly. "Have you seen Fai?"

"He's probably hiding from Touya, if the shouting this morning was anything to go by," Fuuma said.

"What shouting?" Kurogane demanded.

Subaru looked at him for a long moment, and as always whenever he saw the kid, Kurogane was struck by the thought that Subaru had survived rather more than most. There was a kind of tense maturity to his features that sometimes made Kurogane wonder if Subaru wasn't actually older than _he_ was. "Yukito has diabetes. He had a... a crash, a bad one, because he didn't have enough insulin in his body, and Touya found out. He was... is... kind of mad about it."

"That skinny blond bastard was keeping it a secret?"

Subaru nodded, gesturing quickly with one hand. "He said he was going to see Oruha, but he isn't back yet. It's been hours."

Kendappa shrugged, but Fuuma stiffened. "Hours?" he said. "He can't have been hours. Ora died this morning. I was just helping Tomoyo bring her kit over to Kazuhiko's to sew a funeral shroud."

Subaru and Kendappa exclaimed at this news, but Kurogane just narrowed his eyes. Like they hadn't seen it coming. He shifted the sack of ash beast parts to his other hand. "When was the last time any of you saw him?"

"Ten thirty," said Subaru. He checked his watch. "That was about three hours ago."

"He can't have gone far," said Kendappa. "Maybe he's gone to walk it off. Give him a few hours, then let's start worrying."

"He's already had three hours," Subaru said. "I wanted to ask him a question about some of the terms in Yukito's patient file... "

"I'll find him," Kurogane said. "Let me ditch these beast bits and I'll haul the idiot doctor out of wherever he's gone."

"I'm sure you will," Kendappa said, with a sly sort of smile. She shielded her eyes with one hand and peered up the ladder at Fuuma. "Do you even know what it is you're supposed to do on a roof, or are you just hitting it with a hammer?"

"That isn't what you're supposed to do?"

Kurogane left them to it then, heading to his own small house across the street from the clinic. He dumped the sack just inside the back door; there'd be blood all over his floor he'd have to deal with later, but finding the idiot doctor came first. It'd be just like Fai to be sitting in some stupid place being all melodramatic because one terminally ill patient had died. At least now he knew why Fai had requested those pancreases.

Now he just had to find the idiot and drag him out of hiding. Even if it required quite a literal definition of 'drag'.

* * *

Syaoran was doing his homework when Subaru came in, dragging his feet and obviously exhausted.

"Evening," he said, and was rewarded with a small, tired smile; Subaru closed the back door behind him and came into the house proper, shrugging his cloak off and peeling his mask up over his head.

"You're working late," Subaru said. He paused, one hand resting on the back of the chair next to Syaoran for balance as he took off his shoes, and his nose twitched as he sniffed. "What's that smell?"

"Dinner," said Syaoran. "When I came down to feed the hens this morning one of them was dead."

"So you just threw it in the pot?" Subaru was looking at him, his eyebrows drawn together; Syaoran twisted in his chair as his housemate made his way over to the heavy iron cookpot wedged on the grate over the hearthfire. "It could have died of anything -"

"It choked to death," Syaoran said. "I took it in to school and Souma said we could cut it up and perform an autopsy. it was kind of gross."

Subaru was staring at him. "So your whole class hacked our chicken to pieces, _after_ it choked on something, and your reaction was still to throw it in the pot?"

"I didn't want to waste the meat!" Syaoran protested. "It's been ages since we had any meat that wasn't ash beast."

Subaru looked at him. "Which hen was it?"

"San," said Syaoran. "She wasn't the best layer anyway, Ichi produced like three times as many eggs."

Subaru pulled on the oven mitt hanging from its hook by the hearth and lifted the lid on the pot, peering inside. Syaoran waited to see if he'd say anything else; he had that look on his face, like Syaoran had done something weird and Subaru didn't quite know how to reprimand him for it.

Instead, Subaru let the lid fall and said, "I'm really hungry."

"So it's okay?"

"Yeah, it's fine."

Syaoran shoved his homework across the table, clearing a space for Subaru to sit down, and scrambled to his feet. "I'll get it ready now! If you want to sit down, that is."

"Thank you. It's been a long day."

"Is Yukito going to be okay?"

"Yeah," said Subaru. "But I have no idea where Fai went off to. Kurogane said he'd go find him, but if he did, he hasn't brought Fai back yet." He sighed, steepling his fingers.

Syaoran pulled out two plates from the shelf and set about the business of dishing out the chicken. It smelled wonderful. Maybe Sakura would like some; he should offer... "Can diabetics eat chicken?" he asked, hoping for innocuous and unsure if he hit the mark. Subaru smiled faintly and nodded.

"They can-" he started to say, but had to stop when someone knocked on the door, hard. He frowned. "Were you expecting company?"

"No." Syaoran spooned out some potatoes to go with the chicken. "Were you?"

"I'll get it."

Syaoran listened with half an ear at Subaru got the door, portioning out some chicken to take over to Sakura's tomorrow, but stopped abruptly when a very familiar voice growled, "I'm telling you, I searched all over the fucking village and couldn't find him!"

"You think he's left the village?" Subaru sounded disbelieving. "Kurogane, he didn't take anything. His room is just the same as it was when I got him up. Why would he leave the village with no water, food, spare clothing... he doesn't even have a weapon!"

"'cause he's a fucking idiot," Kurogane growled. Syaoran carefully set the chicken down and crept over to the door, sticking his head in from the side to see what was going on; Subaru stepped aside to let him approach. Kurogane was dressed in full hunting gear - black and red, his shirt with the stiff leather panels sewn on to provide more protection - and he wasn't just armed with his usual handguns and sword; he had a bulky backpack over one shoulder. Syaoran gaped.

"You aren't going to go beyond the walls to find him," Subaru said, sounding doubtful. "The deep forest..."

"It's just a forest," Kurogane said impatiently. "I can handle myself. And someone has to go track that fucking idiot down and bring him back.

Syaoran swallowed. "You should wait until the morning," he said, and Kurogane turned that formidable gaze on him but without the heat he reserved for adults like Fai. "Um, I spoke to Sorata and Arashi on the way home from school - they're predicting another storm at eleven pm, a harsher one. It's not wise to go out in it..."

"How harsh is harsh?" Kurogane demanded.

"Like the one from six months ago?" Subaru asked. "When the ash monsters got inside the walls?"

Both of them were tense, but they relaxed a little when Syaoran shook his head. "More like three months ago," he said. "Sorata thinks it'll be the kind of storm that comes with thirty-five monsters, not twenty."

Kurogane paused. "It's Fuuma and Kendappa on patrol tonight. They can cope."

"You're not still going?" Subaru asked. "If Fai really is outside the village - how are you planning to track him through the ash?"

"He'll've gone through the forest. The branches there keep off the worst of the fall. And if he's smart, he'll have sheltered in one of the natural caves. I'll find him," Kurogane said. "I'll take one of the dirt bikes, it shouldn't take long."

"I think you ought to reconsider," Subaru said quietly. "I want... I would like Fai to return as much as anybody, if not more, but this is dangerous, don't you think?"

Kurogane let out a huff of exasperation. "You work out what those medical terms you needed to ask him about were?"

"Eventually," Subaru said. "Yukito told me where to find the medical textbooks in the schoolhouse when he woke up. But -"

"We need him," Kurogane said firmly. He took a step back from the door. "We won't be long."

"Why do _you_ care so much?" Subaru said, suddenly. "This is more than just concern for the only qualified medic in the village, isn't it?"

There was a long pause before Kurogane said anything. Syaoran leaned against the door frame, digging his fingers into its wooden perimeter, and waited, curious. It seemed for a time as though they weren't going to get an answer; then, just as Subaru reached out for the door handle, obviously about to wish Kurogane good luck with his ill-fated mission, Kurogane spoke.

In a subdued voice, he said, "'cos he matters."

Subaru was watching him with his old eyes. Looking back and forth between them - Subaru, slight, fresh-faced and yet so quietly stoic at times; Kurogane, fire and scars - Syaoran found himself wondering which of them had the more experience with the school of hard knocks. He thought Subaru would shut the door then, but instead he said, with still dignity, "Good luck, Kurogane."

"Yeah," Kurogane said. He hefted his pack. "Fine."

Subaru pushed the door closed softly, and Syaoran heard it click with a kind of finality. For a moment they both stood there together in silence in the entrance, then Subaru sighed. "I think I need to move into the clinic until Fai returns. Will you wrap dinner up for me while I collect my stuff?"

"Eat it now," Syaoran said. "While it's still hot." He curled his fingers loosely around the door handle, stood on tiptoes and peered out through the little warped glass window. "Do you think he'll find Fai in that storm?"

Subaru didn't say anything, and maybe that was answer enough. How typical, Syaoran thought, that two of the people he respected most in the village should up and vanish on the same day. He had never been religious - from what he could remember, his whole family had been the same - but right then, he wished he could be the type to just believe.

It would be nice to have _some_ reason to be confident that they would return.


	4. Long ago disappeared

He found Fai's black bag hanging from a tree-branch at one side of the road. It was lightly coated in ash, but otherwise undamaged; Kurogane shoved his goggles impatiently on top of his head and reached for it, his brow furrowing as he opened the flap. Inside was a pretty chaotic jumble of pockets and shapes, but he could see pretty clearly why Fai had left it there, poised and waiting for the lumberjacks in the village to find it after the storm on their way to the logging grounds.

He'd ripped a page out of his notebook, the one he carried with him anywhere, and wedged it in the zipper. It read, in his flowing, liquid handwriting: _Yukito's needle is in the inner pocket. Also spare vial of insulin. Return to Clinic._

_I'm sorry. - F_

That was so fucking typical, Kurogane thought. He slung the bag back up where Fai had left it - he wasn't going back and the work crew would spot it quickly. It didn't do anything to change his resolve to lug that selfish blond moron back with him, even if he had to knock Fai out and throw him over the back of the bike. He pulled his goggles back down as he curled his fingers around the throttle - kicked the stand up and let his wrist turn, felt the engine shuddering underneath him. He'd strapped his pack to the back and he had, by his estimate, enough petrol to get him sixty miles. That would be more than enough to catch a man on foot.

 _You could always take a bicycle,_ Tomoyo had said, when he'd stopped in to see her. She'd been knitting or crocheting or whatever the hell it was she did with all that thread. _They're easier to place, and most likely easier to maneuver in the deep forest, Kurogane._

 _Can you picture me on a_ bicycle _?_ Kurogane scowled, and then scowled further when Tomoyo giggled, covering her mouth with one tiny hand. _What?_

 _Oh, just the mental image of you attempting to pedal one of our more... normal sized bikes._ Her purple eyes had been sparkling. _You'd give yourself concussion hitting yourself with your own knees!_

He'd glared but nothing else. Tomoyo was... Tomoyo. Kurogane didn't have much, but Tomoyo had come through the storm with him, and she was too special to disrespect.

 _Kurogane_ , she'd said, her face growing serious as she lowered her hands, progress on her work stilled. _When you find Fai -_

 _I'll punch him in the fucking face,_ Kurogane grumbled, and then when she raised one fine eyebrow, added, _Sorry. In his_ effing _face._

 _I'm not sure that that's much of an improvement,_ Tomoyo replied smoothly. _Kurogane, when you find Fai, will you do one thing for me?_

_What?_

_Remember what your mother said._

Kurogane blinked, caught off-guard. She always could do that to him. _Why?_

Purple eyes lifted, met his calmly. _It will be important. Will you do that?_

He shrugged. _I... maybe. I guess. If he doesn't act like fuck - like a moron. I don't know._

 _That's all I wanted to ask,_ Tomoyo said. She smiled, lifting up her work. _It's dangerous in the woods, and cold. Bring extra water. You ought to bring this, too -_

_I am not wearing a fucking bobblehat._

_Kurogane!_

_I'm not!_ Kurogane glared at the offending item, but Tomoyo only laughed, and well.

(The bobblehat was at the very bottom of his pack. It was black. The bobble was red, and Kurogane was grudgingly aware of the fact that Tomoyo had won _again_.)

He had to go slow over the mixed ash, mud and leaves that made the forest floor even more slippery than usual. Subaru had asked him how he would find Fai; Kendappa had insinuated that he might want to ask Yuzuriha to accompany him, not so much for her survival skills - although she had plenty of those - but more for Inuki, one of the very few domesticated animals the village had left aside from their hens and goats. His nose would make things easier, Kendappa had said, and Kurogane snorted. He didn't need a tracking dog.

It wasn't like he knew one hundred per cent where the fluff-brained moron would go. It wasn't like he knew one hundred percent what was even going on with the flake. But Kurogane had a pretty good idea, in both cases.

Fai had gone straight to Oruha's after bailing on Yukito and Touya. Kazuhiko had said - in a queer, stiff, colourless voice - that he had seen the doctor that morning, although he had been unable to give an exact time. "This morning has been a blur," he said. "It was after dawn. Before Fuuma turned up."

That had given Fai a three hour window in which to run away. The storm had picked up after Kurogane had returned - that had been about one in the afternoon; Kendappa and Fuuma had covered that evening's storms since Kamui was still on enforced bed-rest from having his chest drained, and Souma was covering for Yukito at the schoolhouse until Saiga and Subaru decided his blood sugar levels were fine and that he could go home. Kendappa and Fuuma knew Fai was missing, so they would have been looking out for him; they'd missed his bag, which meant this direction had been the blind spot in their patrol. They'd've left the road to the gate guard, who would'nt've seen the bag due to the way the road curved. Fai was also not entirely stupid for all he liked to play pretend. He'd run away, not gotten lost. He'd be keeping to the woods, and there was only one direction he could have travelled in that would not have gotten him noticed by Kendappa and Fuuma - west, toward the mountains.

Kurogane knew that area. Not recently - but he'd led their band of refugees over the mountains and to the village after the first storm, relying on crackling, broken radio transmissions and Tomoyo's dreams; back before Sorata and Arashi had been able to forecast the ash storms for them and all they'd had to rely on was there being cover nearby. Fai had come that way too. He knew, as Kurogane did, about the derelict houses left en route; about the natural shelters, particularly in the rocky river regions. He'd be smart enough to head in that direction.

Kurogane's fingers stayed curled around the throttle and didn't once bear down. He had to stay slow unless he wanted to tip the bike over, he knew that... but it was harder than he thought.

There had been a forest out back of his childhood home, back in the old country to the far south. His parents used to let him loose to play in it. "Only," his father had always said, "If you see any men in black and blue, you need to come right home."

Later he'd found out that the soldiers of the Emperor's Guard wore uniforms of black and blue, but by then his home forest had been anything but that. By then his parents had been keeping canned food and survivalist's gear by the back door. 'Just in case.'

Maybe this forest had once been like his old one. Maybe not. He'd never been here in the _before_ , he didn't know; but now it was a grim, silent place, grey and black with only a smudge of green here and there, at the heart of the tree's canopies. The ashfalls had steadily decimated the populations of most wild animals. When they'd first arrived at the village, there had still been some birds, a few ragged deer, some squirrels and rabbits. Not any more.

Kurogane had never been intending to sneak up on Fai; an impossible feat with the bike growling and rumbling like a dragon as it edged across the forest floor. It wasn't a surprise when he crested one swell in the forest floor and glanced down, down; past the upright sticks of Northern trees, narrow and straight-backed and dense, and saw the flash of pale grey that he recognized almost instantly for what it was: a cloak. He'd made it maybe five miles out of the village. Not bad, considering the pauses he'd've had to make for the storms.

Kurogane pointed the nose of the bike downhill and released the brake.

Fai was running through the trees, and in this at least he wasn't pretending. His head was down, his boots kicking up clods of dirt; he was _fast_ , too, fleeting and swift between the tree trunks like some kind of wild creature. Something natural as he sprinted, skidding a little and grabbing hold of one of the trees, spinning around its trunk to keep some of his momentum as he changed course slightly. It was just too bad that in some things, nature - even magic - couldn't keep up with technology. Kurogane's dirt bike screamed as he let it go, the trees whisking past him and the sun blinking in and out of his vision as he chased the fleeing man, one long sunset moment drawn out forever as Fai ran and Kurogane pursued, man in white trying to escape and man in black making ground, getting closer to catching him with every breath, with every _thumpthumpthump_ beat of a frantic heart -

His outstretched fingers caught hold of Fai's cloak. He hauled the bike to a stop, the sudden weight coupled with Fai's slenderness yanking the man backward on his arse, rolling and skidding across the forest floor and freeing him from Kurogane's grip; he leapt from the bike as soon as it came to something like a stop - Fai was still sliding across the floor, mud and ash staining his pale cloak dark, something like shock on his face - and Kurogane skidded the last few inches on his knees, eyes narrowing; it was no different to trapping an ash beast for butchering -

( _except yes, it was, in every detail_ ) -

\- And then the blurred, complicated moment somehow came to an end; Fai on his back, Kurogane leaning over him. One of Kurogane's hands wrapped tight around both of the idiot's skinny little wrists; blue eyes blinking, startled in a way that would have been comical at any other point. "Gotcha," Kurogane said, with some satisfaction. He hadn't even broken anything.

And to tell the truth he'd expected Fai to smile that stupid smile; to pull testingly on Kurogane's grip and then give up as he always did, laugh that stupid laugh, and then say something he didn't mean, words he thoughtlessly wore like some unloved jacket, put on for the occasion and back in the closet when no longer needed. "I didn't know you liked this sort of thing, Kuro-sama~!" Fai might trill, or: "Well, all you had to do was _ask_ , Kuro-dominant."

Instead Fai jackknifed violently in his grip, a scrawny knee catching Kurogane in the stomach and forcing the air out of him with a surprised _woof_! as Fai fought with all his strength, pulling away from Kurogane and skittering over the ground, wild, almost _berserk_ in his struggle to get away. It was no more use than a suffocating fish flopping on the ground; it took more than a kick to the solar plexus to make Kurogane let go. Instead he _tightened_ his grip, yanking Fai toward him while the thin man made a noise like an angry cat, jerking savagely away from him.

"Calm the fuck down!" Kurogane roared. Fai snarled at him, an expression of pure defiance, blue eyes _blazing_ ; Kurogane gave him a hard little shake. "Calm down, you fucking idiot, I'm not letting you go until you _stop_!"

Some part of Fai evidently still existed in the mind of whatever the hell this... this thing wearing Fai's face was. Fai subsided, although Kurogane could feel the tension in those arms.

"Are you done?" Kurogane demanded. "Whatever it was that made you come out here, it was stupid. Let it the fuck _go_." He squeezed Fai's wrists to punctuate that last sentence, and Fai snorted.

"I'm not going back," he said, defiance and contempt married in his voice. "Let me go, Kurogane."

Kurogane froze. Fai's voice was icy and nasty, but it wasn't the tone that sent that sudden spike of worry through his chest. _Kurogane_. How long had he been objecting to those stupid names? Five years now? "No," he said, slowly.

"Let - me - go," Fai repeated, enunciating each word with seething clarity. "I'm not going back, so just let me go - let me _go_!"

"No." Kurogane pulled Fai toward him; Fai hadn't been anticipating it and landed with his face in Kurogane's shoulder. Immediately he tensed up and began squirming. Kurogane didn't care. "Village needs its medic. You're coming back with me."

" _No!_ Let go!"

"Quit whining," he said. It was tricky to get his belt off with one hand, but he managed it; even harder to get that belt around Fai's wrists when Fai realised what he was up to and renewed his struggles. Still, Kurogane had trussed up tougher, meaner prey than Fai. Some of them had spat literal acid.

Once done he stepped back to admire his handiwork, hands on his hips. Fai flexed his wrists, glared up at him from behind a hank of sweat-damp blond hair. "If you don't let me go - and soon, Kurogane - I will make you regret it," he snarled.

"Yeah, no," Kurogane said. "You're needed back there. Whatever _bullshit_ reason made you go running off like a coward - I really don't care."

"You will," Fai said. Some of the venom had drained from his voice; he still sounded pissed, but now he seemed tired too. "Just let me go. I had my reasons. The village doesn't need me as much as it thinks it does."

"I think they know what they need," Kurogane said. He bent over, grabbing Fai by his wrists and hauling him roughly to his feet. Fai was one of the taller men in the village, but Kurogane still had several inches on him and a whole lot of muscle mass. "Come on. To the bike."

"No," Fai said. He refused to move when Kurogane shoved at him - just went over on his arse again, glaring at Kurogane the whole time - and finally with a disgusted _Tch!_ Kurogane bent and hauled him up, lifting the idiot bodily off the ground and throwing him over his shoulder. Fai squawked like a bird. "Let me go, Kurogane! Let me go, you bastard!"

"Nope," Kurogane said. He couldn't resist a smirk at Fai's thrashing; the man couldn't get free, and _some_ payback for all that _Kuro-sama_ and _Kuro-ash_ bullshit was long overdue him, as far as he was concerned. "We got a couple hours to go. If you're going to keep up like this..."

"Last chance," Fai growled, and well, Kurogane really just _did not care_. He turned toward the bikes.

He'd taken maybe two steps, possibly three when something stopped him. There was a strange feeling to the air; a kind of energy.... He raised his right arm, squinted along it. Fai had gone oddly limp and quiet, and Kurogane found himself wondering about that, even as he curiously lifted his head and sniffed -

Moments later Fai hit the ground for a _third_ time as Kurogane dumped him in order to roll away. The lightning bolt that struck the ground a split-second later made it probably a good move.

He came to his feet several feet away, hunkered instinctively into a fighting pose. Ginryuu had come out of its sheath without him really thinking about it, so used to drawing steel in the presence of danger. Fai was watching him from his side amidst the dirt, but there was a smouldering four-foot wide circle of blackened, dry earth between them.

Fai didn't look smug. Kurogane would grant him that. "Huh," he said, still staring at the spot where the unnatural bolt had struck - out of a clear grey sky! "So you're a war mage."

"Yeah," Fai said quietly.

"That would have been good to know earlier," Kurogane snapped. He shifted his weight, swept Ginryuu forward and low. "Think of how many more ash beasts we could've killed!"

"My magic doesn't work properly anymore, Kurogane," Fai hissed. "The first storm broke it all."

"You did _that_ ," Kurogane argued, pointing at the smoke roiling gently out of the scorched earth.

"Not by choice. I _missed,_ " Fai said, defiance sparking in those blue eyes. Maybe he hoped Kurogane would be afraid and leave, in which case he was a moron and he didn't know Kurogane _at all_ ; or maybe he hoped Kurogane would choose bravado and try to force him back, and he would be able to use those lightning bolts again. He was an idiot either way.

Kurogane let his gaze linger on the spot Fai had hit for a while as he mapped out his options quickly in his head, and then sighed, straightening up. Fai was watching him closely. He couldn't let the idiot go off on his own. But he wouldn't just try to drag him back; evidence suggested that would end poorly. He sheathed Ginryuu. "Fine," he said. "Have it your way. If I can't make you come back, I won't." Fai's eyes brightened with victory, and he'd kicked Kurogane in the stomach and tried to fry him alive, so it didn't bother him at all to crush it with the words, "I'll just follow you until you decide to _go_ back. Idiot."

"What?" Fai was looking at him like he'd grown a head or announced that actually, he really preferred chasing chickens to fighting.

Kurogane paused, thinking quickly. His eyes quickly passed over Fai's narrow, dirty frame on the floor. "'Cause you left your bag back by the village," he said. "Do you have _any_ supplies? You didn't even bring water. What kind of idiot goes out into a world with no safe water except rain and doesn't bring extra?"

"No," Fai said, still sounding softly surprised. "Well, yes, I didn't - I meant that's not _why_."

The wind picked up, the only noise in the bone silence. It blew through Kurogane's hair, gentle and cool against his face. "Does it matter?"

"Yes." Fai watched him carefully. "Yes, it does. I can understand chasing me to bring me back... but why accompany me? Won't they need you too?"

"Yes," Kurogane said simply. "So you'd better change your mind soon. As for why... welll..." He squirmed. Those eyes - _blue_ , so _blue_ , like the sky never was these days - were fixed on him. They made thinking somewhat... strange. "Nobody should go out of the village alone. It's dangerous."

Fai swallowed. "Yes," he said, in a quiet, low voice. He glanced away. "It is."

Kurogane took a cautious step around the black patch, but the hair on his arms remained resolutely flat, and he couldn't smell ozone. Fai didn't resist when he bent down and undid the belt buckle. It had left a pale mark behind on Fai's wrists, and Fai rubbed at them irritably as Kurogane re-fastened the belt around his hips.

"So what's next?"

"You don't have a plan?" Fai blinked at him.

Kurogane shrugged. "You were the one who left."

"Oh" Fai said, sounding wary. He shielded his eyes and glanced up at the sky. "There's another storm coming soon. See the clouds on the horizon? I suppose we ought to find shelter."

Kurogane bent over the bike, gripping its handlebar and using it to tug it upright. "There was a cabin about a half-mile from here," he said. "If it's still standing, it'll do."

Fai bit his lip. Some of his bravado seemed to have fallen from him when Kurogane had told him that it was dangerous to go alone, like he hadn't expected that to be the answer and didn't know what to make of it. He kept shooting Kurogane quick, darting glances.

"Cabin it is," he said, and well, that was that. Kurogane bent low, giving the bike a shove, and Fai fell into step on the other side of him, still giving him those little sidelong looks.

Sometime soon Kurogane meant to find out just why the fuck it was Fai had fled. He didn't really care much about how he had to do it, but it had to be done. For now, they needed to get under shelter.

After all, the oncoming ash storm didn't care about _reasons_ , whys and whyfores.

* * *

Fai hadn't expected much out of this so-called cabin. The whole district had been forest and mountainland before the first storm; hick country where people still shot animals themselves _for meat_ , a backwards cesspit to his city-raised senses. The cabin had probably been a hunting lodge, some deep wood homeland for some recluse too antisocial even for the tiny village they'd colonised.

Funny how easy it was for your world view to see-saw.

Perhaps once it had been a handsome log affair, but when Kurogane and Fai came across the small natural dip in the forest the cabin looked far more derelict than it should do in a mere five years. Without someone to brush the ash off its roof the way the kids did back in the village some of it had collapsed, and without meaning to, Fai found himself exchanging a long sympathetic look with Kurogane before he remembered himself. He swung his gaze forward, angry at himself. He couldn't afford to encourage this unwanted stalker.

"C'mon," Kurogane said, leaning over the bike's handlebars and giving it another shove. Its wheels spun and skidded over leaf mold and mud, but he got it going again, and for lack of anything else to do, Fai followed him down toward the cabin, busted roof and smashed windows and all.

Inside smelled strongly like _rot_. Fai unconsciously pulled his filtermask over his nose, but it couldn't make the smell go away; Kurogane didn't seem to notice, rolling the bike all the way into the main room. He kicked the stand into place and stepped back, covering his eyes with one hand and squinting upward. From here the hole looked small, a tiny triangle of poisonous red clouds, but the level of debris and ash across the room indicated that it was large enough. "Now what?" Fai asked, staring up at that gap.

Kurogane grunted. "Bathroom's also busted," he said. "Let's check out the bedroom."

The bedroom ceiling was intact, but the window was smashed open. The room reeked of mold, and without a word Kurogane and Fai cooperated enough to hustle the rotting mattress and box frame that was no doubt the cause out of the room. The ash started falling when they dumped it in front of the house, light grey flakes that could almost be mistaken for snow.

"You don't think this is poisonous, do you?" Fai asked once inside, inspecting some of the fluff growing between the floorboards.

"We're only staying a night," Kurogane said. He was poking around the room, peering up the chimney, and finally came to stand by the bike looking displeased. "Chimney's fucked, can't make a fire. No hot water tonight."

"I wasn't aware I had cold water," Fai said, lifting an eyebrow haughtily. To his disappointment, Kurogane failed to rise to the bait, instead fishing through the big backpack strapped to the back of the motorbike. "I wasn't planning on coming back. I _won't_ go back, Kurogane, but you should. They need the bike and they'll need you, once the ash beasts start prowling."

Kurogane didn't look up. "Kazuhiko's going back on shift now Oruha's passed on," he said absently. "The numbers are good. I checked. Here, hungry?"

He held up a twist of cellophane, like an old sandwich bag with the seams ripped up. "Not particularly," said Fai, which was a lie, but then again most things he said were. He didn't feel guilty. "What is it?"

The hunter shrugged, as if to say Fai's rejection was no big deal. Fai narrowed his eyes. "It's ash jerky," Kurogane said. "It's not bad for travel provisions."

"Travel - you came prepared to _travel_?"

Kurogane lifted his backpack to reveal another one underneath it; canvas and nylon, a sleeping bag. Kusanagi's, in fact. "Just in case," he said, and damn him for being _smug_. Fai glared at him, but he didn't seem to care, instead unwrapping the jerky. "Sure you're not hungry, idiot?"

"No," Fai snapped. "No. I'm not."

Really, it would have been better if he could have left, then. Given Kurogane some sign of how little patience he had. Instead, trapped in that little bedroom with the ashstorm blowing around them, he had to sit there and watch as Kurogane bit into the tough jerky with something that could easily pass for satisfaction on his normally angry face.

 _You're the furthest thing from subtle,_ he thought, bitterly. _I just wish you weren't so smart sometimes, Kurogane._

Kurogane pushed a water bottle across the jagged, uneven floorboards. His attention seemed to be focused anywhere but on Fai, but the water bottle itself consumed Fai's attention; bulky and the liquid within almost crystal clear, only slightly chalky from the filtering process....

He'd come out here to die, he reminded himself. It was what he had coming to him. He'd come out to die, and Kurogane needed to go home and not be such a... such a stubborn _fool_. But the water bottle looked so tantalising. He hadn't drunk anything for almost twenty four hours, going by his wristwatch.

"So," Kurogane said, the very picture of unconcerned; "Why did you go to med school if you're a war mage?"

Fai looked away, and the ash rattled gently against the walls. Kurogane just nodded, like he'd expected that answer, and the silence between them felt suddenly bleak and wasteful, empty for no good cause. Fai caught himself gathering breath in his lungs - the words marching across his brain; _Because when I was seven, I...._

He snatched up the water bottle and defiantly undid the cap, raising it to his mouth and taking a deep pull instead. It was only after he lowered it that he saw the triumphant smirk pulling at the corner of Kurogane's mouth.

Yeah, he was going to have to get rid of this guy, and _soon_.

They didn't talk after that, settling into a frosty, awkward silence as Kurogane gnawed on his ash beast jerky and Fai went to the shattered window, leaning against the broken panes and watching the clouds like blood clots scurrying across the dusk sky, just visible through the shimmering fall of grey flakes. It was a decent view, for all that the light creeping in through said window was a disconcerting shade of crimson, and it kept him as far from Kurogane as he could go, back to the man and arms folded over his chest. He was grateful, yet again, that Kurogane didn't like talking more than he had to.

Storms seldom lasted more than hour, and this one was no exception, but it took the light with it. By the time he turned around twilight had truly fallen and Kurogane was unhitching his sleeping bag, setting it out in a corner of the room, and Fai hesitated before lifting his head. He wouldn't embarass himself and he wouldn't let Kurogane in. He'd already decided that. His fingers were steady as he undid his cloak, and when he wadded it up into a tight ball for use as a pillow on the opposite side of the room, his motions were deliberate and planned. Kurogane didn't respond.

Outside clouds skudded lazily across the sky, occasionally skating over the stars and hiding them. Fai lay with his back to Kurogane and watched them through the window, tracing the constellations he knew; not many, he'd forgone traditional war mage tutoring in favour of med school. His people had practised a different form of astrology, anyway. The pattern of stars to the right, there - named, in the thick dry tongue of the Royal Space Institute as The Elk - he'd grown up thinking of it as The Wolf. His uncle had taught them all their stars, and as he drifted off to sleep it was his childhood lessons he was thinking of, the musty book open on the desk, the stars drawn in by hand, wheeling patterns labelled in spiky, angry handwriting, a tongue that the King's forebears had declared illegal many years ago.

Maybe he should have known better than to go to sleep remembering those times, because as always the memories came to him dark and reeking that night. It wasn't even the blood - he'd handled enough of that by now it had no terror for him; it wasn't even the pain - he'd lost track, somewhere, some _when_ of what that had been like. It was the cold light burning in his uncle's eyes, his fists, stiff and wet and red, the butcher's cleaver held loosely between long fingers, a hand similar to his but broader.

(Grey robe stained brown, old blood and old sacrifice. _Are you the Luck Child, boy?_ Are you? _Tell me!_

_I don't know what that is!_

_Tell me!_ Fingers around his throat, squeezing.)

Fai stirred, hissed out a long soft breath, screwed his eyes tighter shut. For a moment he thought he saw his way out of the dream; then the tides of sleep turned and pulled him further in.

( _Stop it, please!_

Flash of steel, cleaver raised. _Monster. Animal. Witch-thing!_

_We didn't do anything to you! Please stop, you're hurting him!_

And then, noise, light - fire, and: _Stop what you're doing and get down on the floor! In the name of the King!_

 _Freedom._ )

For a moment on awaking Fai thought maybe he was still in his nightmare; some tight band was around his throat, digging into his neck, and it took several wild, thrashing moments of pure panic before he realised it was just the stupid collar of his stupid stiff jacket. He'd fallen asleep wearing it.

He wrestled the jacket off and sat for a while, fingers pressing against his throat, refusing to turn around because he couldn't hear Kurogane and the man was probably awake and _watching_ him. Dawn light was filtering in through the window, and the sky was that light shade of grey that meant good weather nowadays. Or at least, not ash weather. He felt strange; nauseous, tired, rattled.

The usual, then.

Kurogane still hadn't said anything. Fai sucked in a few deep, grounding breaths and turned around to confront the man - and then stopped.

His sleeping bag was gone. So was the bike.

 _Oh,_ Fai thought, surprised, and then, _That was it? So much for his resolve. Guess he couldn't take an idiot like me for long._

The thought discomforted him, which made no sense whatsoever. He _wanted_ Kurogane to go. He wanted to go out and face the end alone. He'd never asked for a supervisor or... or a bodyguard or whatever the hell it was the big thug with his too-sharp eyes thought he was. It was a good thing that he'd gone; the village needed his blade and the bike back, could hardly spare the supplies just for Kurogane to watch its old doctor let himself die. So there was no reason at all to feel... unhappy that he had left. Right.

Still.

He pushed himself to his feet. Most of him was one long lump of stiffness, muscle cramps from the uncomfortable sleeping position. His throat still felt rough where the waxed edge of his jacket collar had caught him, and he knew it had left marks behind running his fingertips over the skin there. Still, he had to get going. Wouldn't be long until the next storm, and he didn't want to find out that Kurogane had left only to fetch back-up. He unfolded his cloak from where it had been his rather uncomfortable pillow and shrugged it back on, tugging out the creases; and then he stepped out of the musty, rotting old bedroom into the main room and tripped over the bike.

"You're finally up'," Kurogane said. He was leaning against the open doorway, his back to Fai, staring out over the vista. From the muffled sound of it he was chewing on more jerky, but Fai could hear a sound like water being poured out... uncomfortably he climbed back to his feet, rubbing fresh ash off his palms and knees. "Was beginning to think you were going to lie there twitching until midday. 's good travelling weather."

"Why didn't you wake me?" Fai asked, coming closer. The water-pouring sound was tapering off, and as he rounded the bulk of Kurogane's back he... oh. He saw what had caused it. "My, aren't you Mister Sophistication."

Kurogane turned and gave him an odd look, a strip of jerky hanging out the corner of his mouth. He was still holding himself, trousers unfastened. "What, you want me to piss _inside_?"

"No!" Fai said, hastily. He averted his gaze as Kurogane tucked himself back in. It... had made for an interesting view.

Kurogane shrugged. "Your call." He bit down savagely on the jerky, allowing it to contort in his mouth as he finished chewing it, and then stood up straight and put his hands on his hips. "So which way today?"

"What?"

"Which way? You had a direction, right?" The _idiot_ remained unspoken, but Fai didn't know why he bothered.

"Why are you doing this?" Fai asked, sharply. "Why won't you go home? I don't want you here."

Kurogane just tilted his head to _look_ at him, red eyes clever and watchful. "Why won't you?"

"I..." Fai broke his gaze. "I should never have been here. It was a mistake."

"Mmm." Kurogane folded his (broad) arms over his chest. "Dehydration isn't a good way to go. You'd know that, though, since you're the doctor."

"I'm not a doctor! I never was. I'm not even a physician," Fai snapped. "I took the classes, but I never sat the exams and I never swore the Physician's Oath. I guess you were right when you called me a fake."

He was breathing harder. Five years of lying and there the secret was, out in the open to the only man who had ever doubted it. Kurogane grinned slowly, like a shark, and Fai had the rather disconcerting sensation that that was his hunting smile.

"Really." Something like victory flickered briefly in those heated eyes. "Interesting."

For a moment the word hung between them, its implications curling through the air. _He wants to know me,_ Fai realised. _He knows I lied and he still wants to know. Why? What does he want?_

"Is that all you have to say?" he challenged.

Kurogane shrugged. "I'm not surprised. I guessed. What do you expect? Have I ever been the gloating type?"

No, Fai realised. Kurogane wasn't. He swallowed heavily, turned away so Kurogane couldn't see his expression. The bike had been wedged in a corner of the main room that still held a roof; but curiously, it had been covered with a rank-smelling sheet, obviously taken from a cupboard somewhere in the cabin. Fai frowned at it. "What's that for?"

"So when we come back, we can pick the bike up," Kurogane said behind him. "No point taking it with us while you're acting like this."

"It's not an act," said Fai.

"Well," Kurogane replied. "That's a first."

 _He's watching me,_ thought Fai, and to his surprise he felt heat rise in his face that had nothing to do with anger. _He's watching what I do. I have to... to be careful. I can't live._

"You wanna move before the next storm?" Kurogane said. "Sky's clear, won't always be that way."

Fai rubbed at his face with both hands wearily, feeling the stiffness of his shoulders. "Yes," he said. "Sure. Whatever. I'm heading toward the mountains. I suppose you're following."

 _What do I have to do to make you hate me?_ he wondered, watching without surprise as Kurogane nodded and hefted his backpack over his shoulders. His sword was still in its sheath, but he carried it at his hip instead of one of his guns. With blade at his side he almost looked like an old storybook warrior, some brave soul heading to face the distant dragon, and Fai was blindsided by the sudden thud-thud-skip of his heartbeat. _You shouldn't be here,_ Fai thought anxiously, and the fondness he felt for the big man - warm, tempered only slightly with his irritation - took him by surprise.

_What do I have to do to make you go?_

* * *

They headed toward the mountains. Kurogane wasn't an idiot, he knew that Fai didn't have anything like a plan, but he'd decided to stick with him. He couldn't make Fai go back - at least, not without receiving another one of those lightning bolts, and next time Fai probably wouldn't miss - and without him chances were pretty good that Fai would get eaten by an ash beast pack during a storm one day, or die of dehydration or whatever.

It was a kind of uncomfortable hike, that was for sure. Fai primly ignored him, letting the only sound they made be the crunch of their boots over the forest floor as they climbed the gently sloping foothills. Kurogane had thought this kind of silence was a good thing, without the idiot's lies and babble. In actuality, it kinda sucked.

The only highlight was a storm, just before noon; they couldn't find a cave so they hid underneath a rocky overhang jutting out over a dip in the terrain. Ash beasts came with the storm, as always; on hearing their baying, ululating call Kurogane unsheathed Ginryuu, ordered Fai to wait with their equipment, and ducked out of their temporary almost-shelter to do his job.

He was somewhat surprised to find Fai following him, hood up, goggles and mask on, one of Kurogane's guns in his long, slender fingers.

"Have you ever even _shot_ one of those things before?" he yelled, over the wind and the whipping particles of ash. Fai held up his hand, flat, and made a seesaw _a little bit_ gesture in the air. Kurogane snorted. "It's a high calibre, it's got a kick," he said. "Hold it in both hands."

Fai just tilted his head and looked at him, and then the ash beasts came bursting through the shrub.

Kurogane had adapted very quickly, after the first storm, to a life that involved killing a lot of four-legged monsters with whatever weaponry he had to hand. He kept his family sword sharp-edged and razored, and when the first beast - large, about the size of a cow but a whole lot more mobile - mandible jaw, probably venomous - leaped at him he didn't duck, just rolled to the side and swept Ginryuu up, allowing the beast's momentum to be its own end as she became a shining slash of silver, lopping off an outstretched paw like it was nothing. The monster hit the ground with a roar, lopsided and limping, but there was another coming and Kurogane had already turned to give his attention to the next monster, smaller, faster, snakelike head on a dog body, fangs too big for its jaw.

Behind him there was a sound like cannonfire as Fai fired, but Kurogane couldn't turn his head to see when the dog-beast came charging, fangs extended and claws grasping; it didn't jump him but barrelled in low, going for his belly rather than his face. Kurogane's muscles moved on instinct, his eyes sweeping the field ahead of him, assessing; and as the monster came within reach he moved - _forward_ , hand on its scaled back, Ginryuu held stiffly out and to the side as he shoved _down_ and jumped over the dog. Another bang, a yip; Ginryuu took the head of a third monster and Kurogane rolled with the flow of the swing, reversing its charge to slice in and _there_ \- spray of viscera as he gutted another monster, the creature itself staggering back, shrieking.

And that was how it was, the smooth flow of battle, the monsters never giving up. They couldn't, didn't know how. Fai picked his shots wisely and Kurogane would have to hand it to the idiot - he was good at them. More than once he turned to his next target only to watch its head nearly _disintegrate_ as a bullet passed right through it, sending its brains out to mix with the muddy ground. Kurogane didn't want to give Fai any more credit than he had to... but it seemed like the man was one of the better marksmen out there.

It had been a large pack, considering. Maybe fifteen monsters. But finally it was over, the ash tapering off, dying out; leaving a collection of bodies, some still drawing breath, on the forest floor. Kurogane stalked quietly between them as the adrenaline drained out of him, checking on the monsters. Some were bleeding out; others were trying to get back to their feet. He killed them both for sure, stabbing _down_ with Ginryuu, pinning them to the forest floor with one great thrust and then sliding her out and leaving them behind, movements stilled and blood puddling on the floor.

"Not bad shooting," he said, wiping Ginryuu clean-ish on the hide of one of the fallen. Fai held the gun loosely, still in a two-handed grip; his gaze was sweeping the exterior edges of the treeline. An ash particle drifted down to hang delicately in his fine pale hair.

"Thank you," he said, indifferently polite.

They were back on their way to the mountains within minutes.

Fai seemed different after the interlude, though, like he had something he wanted to say. Kurogane waited. He could be very patient about these things, and finally, as they came to the pale rocks of a dried-up riverbed, strewn with ash and mud, Fai said, "During that battle -"

He interrupted himself, frowning. Kurogane shifted the weight of the backpack on his shoulders and raised an eyebrow, inviting; finally Fai stopped and turned to look at him directly. "During that battle... how did you always seem to know exactly where the monsters were?"

Kurogane shrugged. "It's a knack," he said. "I've done it since I was a kid."

Fai nodded, gesturing impatiently as if to say _that's all very well, but -_. "But how?"

"I don't know," Kurogane said. "How do you see? How do you hear? I just keep track of things easy, so long as they're alive."

This did not seem to answer any of Fai's questions. He drew to a halt, there on the riverbed stones. "You said your mother was Witchblood," he said, and it was strange how it had been years but those words still stung.

"Yeah," Kurogane said shortly.

"What -" Fai cut himself off, pinched the bridge of his nose between long, slim fingers in frustration. "What kind of magic did she have, Kurogane?"

"Are we moving or standing around talking?" Kurogane asked, and Fai sighed and shook his head, as if giving up on the topic, resumed walking. Kurogane watched him go and then - irritated that Fai thought Kurogane was the type to rely on such stupidly obvious diversion, said - "She saw the future in her dreams."

"What?" Fai looked at him, startled.

Kurogane raised his eyebrow. "Did you not hear or not understand? I thought 'she saw the future in her dreams' was pretty self-explanatory."

Fai hesitated, then stopped again. Kurogane turned back to him, frozen on the bank of the dried-up river, looking sad and knowing and he didn't want to talk, but - "Kurogane, what happened to her?"

And yes, the stinging sensation in his chest was as fierce now as ever; worse, because he knew now that he would never truly be able to avenge her, never be able to track down the Emperor of his home country and put his sword through Rondart's chest like he had sworn. "We were crossing the border," he said. "Illegally, obviously. My dad had bribed some of the border patrol. My dad was - important. We were in the car, and we got to the border, and dad gave them out fake passports but - but they took too long to verify them. We'd been busted. Mum... got out of the car, and told dad to drive right through when there was a distraction. He said he wouldn't, she told him he would, she'd seen it, and he had to do it for..."

"For you," Fai finished softly.

"Yeah," Kurogane said. He looked away. "For me."

"Red eyes," Fai said, but absently, as if to himself. "Red eyes meant something, I _knew_ it..."

"I'm not Witchblood," Kurogane reminded him. "I couldn't do anything before the storm. Can't do anything now."

Fai frowned at him, then nodded slowly. "No. Of course."

"What about you?" Kurogane climbed up the rest of the bank then turned around, looking down at him. "You're a war mage. They're pretty fucking rare, aren't they?"

Fai said, almost shyly, "There were seven of us. And twenty-two doctors."

"Your parents must have been pretty powerful."

"They died when I was a baby," Fai said. "Well, I say died. Their throats were slit."

" _What_?"

Fai sighed. "It doesn't matter," he said. "I was small, and the man who did it was executed by the King."

Kurogane stared. "So... who raised you?"

"My uncle," Fai said. "It's... irrelevant."

But there was something in the way he wouldn't meet Kurogane's gaze, more aversive than usual. It _did_ matter, Kurogane thought; in fact, when it came to Fai, it might be the most important thing there was. He reached out and gripped Fai's shoulder, forcing the idiot mage around to look at him, and glared. Fai heaved a long-suffering sigh.

"There are a ton of people from your country in the village," Kurogane said. "Most of them have names that follow the same pattern as in _my_ home country. Which makes sense, 'cuz I know my history, or at least a little bit. People from my country settled yours years, ago, right? That's why the language is the same, the names, the culture - even our appearance. But you... 'Fai' is a foreign word."

"Yes," said Fai. "It is."

"What does it mean?"

"What?" Fai's blue eyes flashed in surprise. Kurogane dug his fingers in, just in time to stop the idiot from attempting to eel out of his grip. "It's - Kurogane, it doesn't _matter_."

"My name means Black Steel," Kurogane said. "It's an heirloom name. I got it from my dad, who got it from his dad. It marks me as being a native of my country. What does _yours_ mean?"

Fai was frozen, those eyes fixed on Kurogane's face. Kurogane could almost see the wheels spinning in his head, and he shook the man, not harshly but enough to drive his point home.

"It means 'lucky,'" Fai finally said. He looked away. "In the tongue of the indigenous of my area, that's all it means. Lucky, maybe 'lucky kid' if you want to get funny with translation."

There was a bitterness to his voice that was fresh and new, but Kurogane saw no reason to doubt him. "And your uncle was the same?"

"Yes."

"What did he do to you?"

" _What_?"

"I'm not an idiot," Kurogane growled. "You try so hard to lie but you've always been fucking terrible at it. What did your uncle do to you?"

"Nothing!" Fai glared at him, but Kurogane knew his tells by now. Five years of watching them march across his face; of course he knew the idiot's tells. Thing was, he could guess most of the story; a small community forced closer together by the occupation and conquering of their country, ignored by their invaders and the outside world. Growing closer and closer, and maybe some people had problems, but what did the settlers whose culture bombarded theirs care?

What kind of things could you do in that blind spot, while the rest of the world looked away and pretended not to see? What sorts of darknesses could take place there, in that corner of a declining society?

"My name means 'lucky,' Fai said icily. It sounded like something he'd learned by rote, maybe some story he repeated to himself in the dark. "I was treasured and important to the native Valerian people. And then I was discovered to be a war mage, and I was even more important. Everything was fine. You're so _paranoid_ , Kurogane. You should stop that."

The moment hung between them like a spider web, a gossamer thin strand that would break with the slightest movement. Fai's eyes were almost luminous amidst the grey sky and the grey rocks; the brightest, most colourful thing around, their blue blazing and soft. Kurogane realised his throat was dry, and irritably turned away.

He was right. He _knew_ he was right. But you never could get to Fai by the most direct route. You had to circle, to come in from the sides. "Fine," he said, shortly. "Whatever."

They kept walking. Ahead of them the mountains loomed, tall and white-capped and so far away.

* * *

They sheltered that night in an old cave in a rocky area of the hills, and this time Kurogane was able to start a fire for them. The dry, brittle branches caught easily but burned fast, and Kurogane tossed some of the trash from the cave onto the bonfire to provide more fuel. He had a pot in amidst his travelling gear, and it took the both of them to set it up over the fire on a crude tripod. Fai took it on himself to fill it with some of the water Kurogane had brought while Kurogane went to sort out more.

That had, more or less, become Kurogane's forte. There were no animals to set traps for - just the ash beasts, if you wanted meat - so Kurogane spent his time doing something tricky involving plastic sheeting, holes in the dirt and canteens to collect condensation; Fai didn't know or, really, care. He just knew that Kurogane could make water appear overnight even when it didn't rain. It was a good skill to have, he supposed.

It had stormed again shortly before twilight, and another bunch of ash beasts had come out of the ground - out of the almost thin-air itself, as far as Fai knew - to attack them. The result was the dripping bit of meat clouding up the water in the pot, still red and bloody. The blood would probably make a decent stock, Fai supposed. Kurogane had brought a small twist of salt in amidst his bags, and Fai was keeping it on hand along with some wizened potatoes and an onion that looked like it had seen better years, let alone days. With any luck, it would all lead to a half-decent stew.

Fai had always liked cooking. He'd never been allowed to do it regularly; first there had been his... childhood home, which they spent in either the temple or their room, then there had been the Palace, where servants had eagerly awaited on him; and then the College, where he simply hadn't had the time. He took the med school classes during the day, but he had to catch up on war magic during the evening, with Ashura patiently tutoring him through the principles.

Then there had been the village, where people took it upon themselves to make his meals, steamrolling right over his careful, oh-so-polite refusals.

When Kurogane came back in he was stirring the meat in the pot with Kurogane's knife, a thick serrated blade more appropriate for stabbing monsters to death than cutting meat for cooking, but it was what they had and what they would have to make do with. Kurogane himself didn't comment on it, just padding over to sit opposite Fai, the fire between them. "When's dinner?" he said.

It was the first time he'd spoken since his questioning by the dead river. Fai considered ignoring him, then decided against it. It was eerily quiet, out here in the deep wilderness. Any voice was a refreshing change from his own, running snidely through his head. "Half an hour," he said. "The meat isn't even brown yet."

"Never seen you cook before," Kurogane said, with his uncanny ability to echo Fai's thoughts. "You learn that at med school?"

"No." Fai carefully turned the hank of meat over. Maybe he should have diced it. "I learned it after I left. I like cooking."

"Someone has to," Kurogane said, eyeing the pot. "Never saw you ask Kusanagi or Yuzuriha for their cooking stuff, so..."

Fai stirred the water, then drew the knife out of the pot and delicately tapped it against the rim to coax a few droplets from the rim. "Kusanagi and Yuzuriha have enough to carry," he said. "I dislike asking them for anything but the essentials. And the people of the village were very kind about sharing their food. Too kind."

Kurogane snorted. "You're the medic," he said, scornfully. "Of course they'll make you meals. Half of 'em think you're too fucking skinny."

That coaxed a smile out of Fai before he could stop himself. Hastily he smoothed his expression back into a neutral one. "I've always been this way," he said. "My tutor used to worry about me when I was studying war magic."

"Yeah," Kurogane said, "I'm sure." He had Ginryuu across his lap, and now he bent to resume rubbing at her length with a rag, his head bowed and his eyes intent on his task; for some reason the sight sent a flash of warmth through Fai's belly and he looked away, uncomfortable. "I always wondered what it was you guys actually did. Weren't there international treaties against actually _using_ you in warfare?"

Fai nodded. "A long time ago, yes," he said, keeping his eyes on the pot; in his peripheral vision he could see Kurogane was still polishing his sword, and it was making him even more uncomfortable. "We mostly just policed magical threats. Rogue sorcerers attempting dangerous spells; terrorists plotting to use magic - that sort of thing. We can 'see' other spellcasters' magic."

 _Which is why you confuse me so much,_ he thought to himself. _I can't see you, but... but I think you have some._

"Dangerous spell? Like, explosives?" Kurogane had his head tilted to one side. His hand had stilled, fingers splayed out, resting casually over his sword's steel body.

"That's one kind of danger." The water was bubbling faster; Fai slid the knife back into the pot and stirred the meat. "Others involve less physical damage, but can be just as dangerous. I told you the simplified version of why magic is all screwed up, right? That the first storm broke the leylines - the power lines through which magic travels, kind of like electrical power lines?"

"Yeah," Kurogane said. "You talked about wild magic. I don't get the difference."

"Wild magic is... sentient, of sorts," Fai said. "It's capricious and nearly impossible to get results out of. Some kinds of magicians can use it to a limited extent, like Sorata and his weather-witch ways; others get along just fine with wild magic, like dreamseers or... or precognitives..."

He trailed off. Kurogane's mouth pulled into a scowl; his eyes were on his sword. "Yeah," he said. "I see. But not your kind, right?"

Fai shook his head. "Not unless it feels like cooperating with us," he said, in a small voice. "Sometimes it will work with us until the very last second, then change its mind. It's dangerous. Especially for a healing mage. Imagine if you almost have a man or woman cured, and then the wild magic decides to backfire or worse, surge, so you put far too much magic in someone's body. You don't just cure them - you make certain cells practically immortal."

"Like cancer," Kurogane hazarded, which was such a surprisingly isnightful comment Fai was pretty sure he gawked. Kurogane snorted in a kind of cruel amusement.

"Yeah," Fai agreed. "Like cancer, in a way."

"Shame you guys didn't see the first storm coming," Kurogane said. He lifted his sword, turned it over so he could polish the other side. "Maybe you could've stopped it."

"We tried," Fai said, before he could catch himself, and Kurogane looked up sharply. "What?"

Fai bit his lip, but it was too late to pretend. Kurogane's red eyes were blazing. "Um."

"You _tried_? You saw it coming? _What happened?_ "

"Remember I said that a spell doesn't have to have a physical effect to be dangerous?" Fai tried. "There are certain other spells people can try that um, can potentially break the world."

"Like what," Kurogane demanded. He'd given up on cleaning the weapon - he was leaning forward, eyes sharp and red and watchful.

_But, most critical of all, healing magic cannot be used to return someone from the dead._

"Resurrection," Fai said quietly. "Attempting to bring back a life that has already ended. Nobody's ever done it - it's impossible. Trying would destroy everything; the amount of _power_ necessary - it can't be done. But someone tried."

"Who?" Kurogane snapped, and Fai swallowed.

(This is the man, _Ashura said, poised and still in the conference room. Fai glanced around at the other members of the Council; pale-faced, grim._ We know what he is trying to do. We know how he is trying to do it. The amount of power he has raised is of such magnitude, ladies and gentlemen, that I strongly doubt we will survive this fight.

_Nods all around. People knew. They'd been able to work it out for themselves. Fai glanced down at the photograph in his hand, watched the way it crumpled in his white-fingered grip._

We have five hours, _Ashura continued._ Go home and say goodbye to your loved ones. I do not think any of us will see them again. And remember - this is the price we are promised to pay. Our lives for the world; it's all we've got.)

"His name was Fei Wang Reed," Fai said softly. "He was a sorcerer like none we've seen before, and he - and he was trying to raise the dead. He had _so much_ power, Kurogane, none of us had ever seen anything like it before. And we knew the only way we could stop him from shattering the world was by surrounding him and boxing his magic in, containing the blast; and we knew we would die doing it, but that was what we had to do, you see? That was our price for having the powers we had."

Kurogane was staring at him, his face impassive. The flames of the fire made the shadows at the edges of his mouth deeper, darker. "Your _price_ ," he said, derisive. "Like you had a choice." He sighed, looked away. "You're still here," he said. "What happened?"

Fai ducked his head. "I... it's..." The meat was boiling and suddenly, suddenly he felt the old flightiness rise, faint terror in his chest, clogging his throat. He tossed the potatoes in and climbed to his feet, dropping the dagger, and took a few steps back from the fire, wrapping his arms around his chest like he couldn't fight back his shivers; he was cold but it was somewhere deep inside, nothing to do with external temperature.

"I'm sorry, Kurogane. I don't want to talk about it," he said, firm. He looked Kurogane in the eye, searching; for censure, or sympathy, or worse, anger. He didn't know. He didn't see any of it. "I didn't have a choice. Sometimes plans go awry, Kurogane. So did this one."

Kurogane sighed. "Go figure," he muttered, then, abruptly, "Wait. This - this suicidal blast containment, this - this is why you're out here?"

"What?" Fai could feel his own surprise in how his heart was suddenly thudding in his chest. He tried to grin. "Kurogane, where did you -"

"You think you should have died back there," Kurogane said, slowly, like he was puzzling it out as he talked. He climbed to his feet. "Fuck, this explains - that's why you're out here without water or food, you fucking _idiot_ -"

"Kurogane, really," Fai said. He tried to laugh. It felt more like a cackle, and a frightened one at that. "Where do you come up with these things, I -"

Kurogane was coming around the fire, bristling. "Listen, you fucking moron," he snarled. "I don't care if you ran away, I don't - I don't fucking _care_ if that was why the world ended, you don't just get to kill yourself _now_ and act like that fucking fixes anything -"

"Well, maybe it will!" Fai snapped back, his belly roiling and tight with something nameless. "I, I shouldn't have - I shouldn't have let myself - What business is it of yours?"

"Because it's fucking pathetic!" Kurogane roared. "Dying won't fix _fuck all_ , you raging moron! The village needs you as its doctor, not some pathetic moping -"

Fai laughed. It sounded shrill in his own ears, desperate. "But that's me, Kurogane. I'm a coward and an idiot and _there is no point to me_ , you said it yourself - they'll get by with Subaru and Saiga, they don't _need_ me -"

Steel whistled through the air. Fai flinched, but Kurogane had absolute control; his sword slid to a halt resting lightly against Fai's throat. "If you want to die so bad," Kurogane said, "Then I'll kill you myself, you fucking moron."

Fai's heart was thudding a fast tempo in his chest, longing and adrenaline and most of all, terror. "Yes," he said, feeling the blade pressing against his Adam's apple. "Yes, go ahead, I -"

Kurogane pushed, and Fai recoiled instinctively as the silvery sword cut into his skin; watched as Kurogane's mouth curved into a feral smile. For a moment they remained still, poised that way; Kurogane's attack, Fai's survival response, strong and vivid and clear for anyone to see, but _anyone_ wasn't here right now, just _Kurogane_.

"Looks like your body didn't get the suicidal memo," he said.

Fai swallowed, raised a shaky hand and pressed it to the cut - the scratch, really. There was wetness under the pads of his fingers; Kurogane had drawn blood. "This -" He had to break off, clear his throat. His voice was hoarse and husky. "This doesn't mean anything," he said. "It's just biology."

"Isn't everything we do, in the end?" Kurogane slid Ginryuu back into her sheath. His eyes were gleaming bright with knowing. "We'll see, idiot. Sit down and finish the food."

"I want to die," Fai said quietly. It was the first time he'd voiced it out loud. "I want to _die_ , Kurogane."

Kurogane waved a hand negligently. "I'll get to it," he said. "When the time is right."

Fai went back to the cookpot.

* * *

Kurogane was up to his arms in ash beast guts when it came to him that he wanted to kiss Fai.

It wasn't a big realisation. Maybe it should have been; Kurogane had known he was gay for some time but never before had he had a thought like that about one specific guy. Still, that was how it was; post-hunt, Fai picking his way through the corpses of the back as the last flecks of ash alighted on his face and clothing, the slippery, hot blood of the creature's innards under Kurogane's hands as he dressed the carcass. Its heart was in his palm. Maybe that meant something, too, but all he knew was that Fai had that line between his brows and Kurogane kind of wanted to lift that filtermask out of the way and kiss him.

 _Now who's the fucking idiot,_ he cursed himself, yanking savagely and stepping aside as the creature's guts slithered out of the slash in its belly, wet and steaming in the chill late autumn air.

Following their confrontation the other night things between them had become even more frosty and tense; Fai wasn't talking to him more than the barest minimum, aloof and withdrawn. It had been his turn in the sleeping bag last night - they alternated every night, nowadays - he had slept quite pointedly with his back to Kurogane, huddled up small and tight under the covers.

He'd called for someone named _Ashura_ in the night. Just once, but it was enough; enough for Kurogane to be suspicious. His grasp of Taishakuten's advisors wasn't great - he'd read the papers every now and then in the old days, but hardly frequently. He still knew the name. Duke Ashura, the leader of the Council of Seven, the war mages who served under the King. Probably if Fai's magic had been discovered young, Ashura would have been his teacher; and if his childhood had been as rough as Kurogane suspected, he might well have been the first person to show Fai kindness.

If there was any kindness in taking in a damaged child and twisting him all up in the head, so that he thought his life, his actions, his _choices_ should be forsaken in service to the King.

Still, Fai was ignoring him as he picked his way through the dead, so he busied himself hacking at the tough scaled hide. This ash beast was about the size of a deer, and kind of looked like one, horns and cloven hooves and all; it also had a long rat-like tail tipped with a two-foot barb and a mouth lined with layers of teeth, not unlike a shark. It had five eyes. The meat would still be edible, though, and earlier today they'd found an overhang fostering a collection of mushrooms. Kurogane had gone through them, very carefully, picking out which ones were edible; they'd also found a bushel of wild onions, which were less than stellar but would help add some variety to their diet. They still had the cheese Kurogane had brought with him from the village.

It wasn't the best, but it had been a long time since that had been an option. Kurogane missed fish. The rivers around the village were contaminated by the ash, and it had been too long since he'd had a good bite of sushi.

Finally he straightened up, meat slung over his shoulder, the blood leaking down his bare back; but it wouldn't soak through to his skin and that was what mattered. On the other side of the battlefield Fai glanced up sharply. He still held Kurogane's gun.

"C'mon," said Kurogane. "Let's get out of here."

Fai nodded, but he didn't say anything. The red line of the scratch Ginryuu had left against his throat was still vivid against his pale skin.

 _Lucky kid,_ he'd said his name meant. Maybe there was something to that.

"You think the ash beasts were created fresh in the first storm?" Kurogane asked, as they made their way out of the gully they'd stuck out the attack in.

Fai shook his head. "They used to be normal animals once," he said, like it was common knowledge, and Kurogane nodded. He'd suspected that for a while. Fai's voice was distant and unemotional.

 _You do not want to kiss him,_ Kurogane reminded himself grumpily. _He's an idiot and you'd probably set him off angsting._

Still. He wanted to. More fool him.

They made about five more miles that day, well and truly into the mountain lowlands by now. The forest had been left behind, and what they had now was scruffy fields of rocks and shallow cliffs. They wouldn't be scaling the things, not as far as Kurogane knew. There was a valley they could take, between them.

That night they sheltered in a small crack in the cliff walls, hardly even a cave. It was bone-white and empty inside, and there wasn't enough room to fit more than the two of them, pitched side by side in the dark. Fai whispered Ashura's name in his sleep, and Kurogane lay awake, his arms folded behind his head and his sword at his hip, and wondered what Fai would think if he turned his head - just a little, that would be all - and brought their mouths together. Regret, probably.

Irritably he pulled Ginryuu over to him, coaxing her out of her sheath - difficult in this small cramped space, but not impossible - and setting her across his lap. His whetstone was in his pocket, as always, and angrily he bent over the blade, bringing the rock along her edge; _snickt, snickt, snickt._

Fai jerked awake next to him, raising a head of wild hair, blue eyes bleary but clearly startled. Kurogane froze in what he was doing, confused; watched as Fai blinked and looked at him, more rattled than he expected. "Uh," he said. "What the hell?"

"Scissors,"Fai said groggily. "Thought I heard _scissors_."

"What?" Kurogane's brow furrowed, but Fai had caught sight of the whetstone in his hand, was already relaxing.

"It's nothing," said Fai sleepily. "Good night, Kurogane."

And without another word he lay back down, back still to Kurogane. Kurogane _tched_ under his breath, tetchily, and picked up Ginryuu's sheath, sliding her back in. It'd have to wait until tomorrow. He lay back down, staring up at the ceiling; and then growled under his breath and rolled onto his side, back-to-back with Fai and angry.

The next morning Kurogane woke up early and left the gully before Fai had even begun to uncoil himself; he was a bundle of limbs and wild blond hair down low in the sleeping bag, his arms around his knees. Last night he'd dug watering holes in the hard ground, and now he went to check on them, blearily adjusting his sword belt as he squeezed out of the crevasse, leaving Fai still and quiet behind him. Being near the useless bastard wasn't helping.

The holes were fairly easy. His dad had taught him how to do it, a while ago; his father had been a general of Emperor Rondart's Imperial Army, a soldier who had seen difficult and dangerous survival campaigns. He had taught Kurogane how to dig the holes, stretch out the plastic over them - 'we used our parachutes, when I was there,' he'd said, laughing. Kurogane's mother had just smiled at him fondly. Then you put a saucer or cup down in the middle of the hole, dented the parachute or plastic so that its lowest point was right over the cup, and weighed the plastic down around the edges of the hole with stones. Then you left it. The condensation would gather on the plastic and make its way down to the low point, where it dripped into the cup.

It'd been working wonderfully so far, and Kurogane topped one of the water cantons up to fill with the condensation, but the third... the third had caught something that definitely wasn't water.

"What the fuck," Kurogane said, staring down into the hole. The little creature at the bottom squirmed and cried out pitifully. It had been drinking the water in the saucer when Kurogane had checked on it; the stones had not been enough to keep the plastic in place when the white... thing had stepped on it, and had collapsed, dumping the creature at the bottom of the pit.

That wasn't really a problem - they had more than enough water - but what was a problem was that the creature shouldn't _be_ here. It was skinny as hell and fluffy, but there were no living animals beyond the village; no birds, no nothing. The ash and the monsters had killed them all off. Unable to stop himself, more curious than anything, Kurogane leaned forward, reaching into the pit and grabbing the writhing white _thing_ by the scruff of its little neck; its paws flailed pathetically at the air and it _meeped_ at him. Its eyes were red, like its little pink tongue.

 _The idiot should see this,_ Kurogane thought suddenly, and was unable to keep his mouth from curving into a grin.

Fai was awake when Kurogane returned, sitting out front of the crevice and folding the sleeping bag up. He had dark circles under his eyes and his hair was wild and mussed; the collar of his jacket had been opened a button, and the scratch looked almost fresh.

"Oi," Kurogane said, unable to keep some of the glee from his voice. "Look what I found getting water."

"Kurogane, I'm not..." Fai's voice trailed off and his eyes widened. "Is that a _fox kit_?"

Kurogane shrugged. "It fell down one of the water pits I made," he said. "Look after it, will you?"

And without further ado, he dumped the fox kit in Fai's lap. Fai flinched, but his wide-eyed, bewildered expression didn't let up. "How can -" he checked - "She be here? All the foxes are dead, like everything else!"

"Yeah," said Kurogane, "And yet, here she is."

The fox kit squirmed in Fai's hands.

"What is she, like, an arctic fox? They're white, right?"

"No," Fai said absently. "She's got black socks... I think she's some kind of albino. Oh, we shouldn't've handled her, Kurogane... her mother won't take her back if she smells like us..."

"I didn't see a mum," Kurogane said. "Just her, at the bottom of my pit."

Fai swallowed and glanced up at Kurogane, looking worried. "I'm going to try giving her some of the meat from yesterday. She's so skinny..."

Kurogane hesitated. "Fine," he said. "It's got nothing to do with me."

"Kurogane!" Fai's cheeks were flushed faintly with colour. "This is the only animal we've ever seen outside the village - she's important, you can't just -"

"Watch me," said Kurogane flatly. "She's your problem."

Fai's blue eyes narrowed. "Fine," he said icily. "I'll look after her for now. She's hungry. I'm going to give her some of our food."

"You do that," Kurogane said, with as much indifference as he could muster. He turned away, watching out of the corner of his eye as Fai unwrapped the meat from its place amidst their backpack; as he carefully tore a small segment out of it using Kurogane knife, fed it to the fox cub with his fingers. She took it from him cautiously, and from the small smile that lit up Fai's face, mission fucking success.

If the blond had nothing better to do than mope around feeling sorry for himself, well, now he had a distraction. And maybe taking care of the stupid fox - because Fai was the type to _mother_ things, the type to _care_ for all that he tried so hard not to - maybe that would remind him there were things, that there were _people_ who needed him. Kurogane was not above playing dirty.

Fai ended up taking the kit with him when they left the campsite midafternoon. He'd fed her so much meat and water her stomach was quite stuffed; she rode in his hood peacefully, popping her head out at random intervals for the rest of the day and _meeping_. Judging from the soft light in Fai's eyes, Kurogane counted that as a victory, of sorts.

The idiot named her _Mokona_.


	5. Who taught you emotions?

Things started to settle into a sort of routine between them after Kurogane handed over Mokona. Fai still wanted to die, and he wasn't stupid enough that he didn't see what Kurogane was trying to pull... but she needed him with a simple honesty that he knew he would try not to let her down. He had disappointed, he had _failed_ enough people in his life that one tiny fox kit's needs were easy enough to satisfy. As long as she had food and water she was content, and truth be told it wasn't entirely unpleasant having her curl up in the lee of his body, tiny and fragile with her big bushy white tail. She was happy enough to ride in his hood, and with care, some of the skeletal thinness faded from her.

Simple and unreserved. Fai had never quite been loved like that before.

They were passing through the valley between the mountains now, the mud and ash thick here where the snowmelt ran off the mountaintops. The terrain was tricky and they tried not to travel in or near a storm; the last thing they needed was an ash beast attack in this slippery footing. Once they got through the mountains, Fai had no idea what kind of terrain would lie ahead of them. He hoped it was good territory for a fox to be set loose in - because of course he couldn't keep Mokona, not with his stated life goals. Kurogane was going to kill him when it was the right time. Fai meant to hold on to that.

That day was just like the others; they'd woken in an overhang, weary and tired, and after a quick breakfast of jerky - softened in water for Mokona, whose teeth were not yet sharp enough to handle the dried meat - they'd set off along the trail, slipping in some places but otherwise okay. The sky was rainstorm grey, rather than ashstorm red. That was a good thing, provided they could find somewhere watertight to hole up.

But by the time the rain started, they were still no closer to finding a shelter. Mokona was making irritable squeaking noises, hunkered low in Fai's hood; he paused to resettle her across his shoulders and draw the hood up. She poked her face out of his cloak, her cheek resting against his, soft and small, and it made him smile. Kurogane was ahead of them, shoulders squared, head down, trudging onward with determination, sword at his hip and broad back straight, and it was a shame about the cloak, Fai thought idly, because it _quite_ spoiled the view...

The thought startled him enough to make him jerk physically, and he was just beginning to question it ( _What do I mean 'the view'_ ) when a piercing shriek split the air, carrying over the pounding of the rain.

He had Kurogane's gun in his hand before the ringing had quite died down - in both hands, raised to eye-level, sweeping the mountainside on either side of them with the weapon. He couldn't make fireballs out of thin air anymore, but the combat principles had stayed with him. Kurogane had Ginryuu out, the sword almost glowing against the grey smudge of rain.

"It can't be," Fai said. It was raining too hard for his voice to carry, especially at that pitch; but Kurogane turned back to him and cupped his hand over his mouth.

"Ash beasts!"

"It's not storming!" Fai hollered back. Mokona shifted on his shoulders. "How can there be ash beasts without a storm?"

Kurogane shrugged exaggeratedly and resumed scanning the mountain passes, yanking his hood down impatiently to give him better peripheral vision. His short, bristly hair flattened very quickly under the deluge, the few strands that hung loose at the front plastered to his forehead. Abruptly he grinned - viciously, the grin that sent shivers of excitement and fear both through Fai's belly - and pointed upward. "There!"

There was a four-legged shape hunched low on the rocks above them, barely more than an outline in the sky. Lightning flashed, and Fai found himself holding his breath, counting out the seconds - _one two three four five_ \- before thunder crackled, cataclysmically loud.

 _You're not supposed to be here,_ Fai thought, shocked, but the creature obviously didn't care. It crouched low and then sprang; its jump brought it to the mountain trail a few feet away from Kurogane, who turned smoothly to face it, weapon at the ready.

Mokona's terrified yip served as his warning, and he spun around to see two more creatures behind him. One had maybe been a coyote before; the other was some kind of mountain sheep, both huge and hulking. Fai took a deep breath, centering it within himself to calm the shaking in his heads; and then he lifted Kurogane's gun and blew the former coyote's brains out. The _crack_ of the gun going off at this range sounded louder than the thunder.

Mokona was growling low in his ear - as if a fox kit could do any damage to these things - but it served to steady him. He took aim again; the sheep roared in fury, jaws unhinging and revealing another maw behind them, a whip-like tongue. He danced backward right as it lunged for him.

The rain was sleeting from the sky as though it had a mission, but it was just that, rain; not even the dangerous mud mix you got when it rained during an ash storm. The monsters should not be out and about. Near as Fai had been able to tell, they needed the wild magic unleashed during an ashstorm to survive. He shot - missed, the bullet hitting the sheep-thing's flank and tearing apart bone and flesh, knocking it over, but it wasn't a killing blow for all the damage it did. Behind him he could hear Kurogane roaring battle-cries, almost hear the _swish_ of his sword, but now there were more monsters descending the mountain, claws sliding over the stones and filling the air, shaggy fur and scaled hides, horns and teeth and scorpion tails; quills and claws and terrible, terrible danger. He ducked and rolled away from a blow by a bear-beast that would have taken his head off his shoulders, twisting at an awkward angle to keep from crushing Mokona.

After that it devolved very quickly into a fight to keep going; Mokona clung to his shoulder determinedly, her tiny prickling claws a living reminder of why he had to get through this. His gun barked and kicked in his hands, the recoil making him grit his teeth as he took aim and fired, again and again, forcing his breathing even and taking as much time as he could to pick his shots; Kurogane was a blur behind him, a lethal flashing blur of black and red and silver, leaving bodies behind on the rain slicked stones as he whirled and thrust, oily black blood washing away in the rain.

It looked like they were winning; Kurogane snarled as he spun, parting another creature's head from its neck, and Fai felt water flying from his eyelashes as he blinked, sighting down the barrel as he put another bullet in one of the monsters before it could even finish its leap from the cliff edge. It crashed to the stones between them and Kurogane snapped his gaze to it, sword raised, before realising it was dead; he lifted his eyes, grinning _that_ grin, and Fai found himself returning it with relief, because there were only a few monsters left and he was alive and Kurogane was alive and Mokona, the last fox alive, was clinging to his shoulders still, _meeping_ in triumph. They were going to win, and -

And then he felt _it_.

 _We can 'see' other spellcasters' magic,_ he'd told Kurogane. This one was brilliantly blue; blinding, beautiful, blazing blue, shining like a beacon from the mountaintop, and despite himself Fai felt his mouth open - felt the gun slip from his fingers, falling, discarded on the stones; there was rain in his eyes and monsters still there but suddenly all of that was irrelevant - the _blue_ , the _magic_ , perfect and enticing, calling him from atop the ridge.

"Mage?" Kurogane was shouting. "Mage, what the _fuck_ -"

 _Fai,_ he thought, wildly. _Fai, that's Fai's magic, it can't - that's impossible, you_ DIED, _it's how we ended up like this -_

But in his other senses, there could be no mistake. That was Fai's magic glowing, just out of sight over the ridge. He felt his feet moving, the beasts around him fading to nothing as he made his way toward the incline; if he could just climb it - if he could just get up there, _Fai_ would be there -

Kurogane hit him like a freight train, knocking him flying and startling a squeal out of Mokona; his weight sent them all crashing to the rocks, men and fox. "What the fuck are you doing?" he roared; the rain was washing away streaks of blood from his face, pinkish streams trickling from his jaw.

"Let me go," Fai hissed, trying to work his arms free; but Kurogane was squeezing them to his sides, keeping him pinned. He bucked, thrashed. "Let me go, Kurogane - he's up there, I have to go to him, I have to get him -"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Kurogane demanded. He gave Fai a shake, and not a gentle one at that. "Idiot, stop -"

A beast leapt at them, and with a muffled curse Kurogane had to let Fai go to duck out of the way and retrieve his sword; he'd dropped it when he lunged to knock Fai over. Fai took advantage of the momentary distraction, getting his legs underneath him, boots slipping over the wet rocks - but Kurogane had a tight grip on his sleeve. The ash beast collided with him, and Fai froze, watching the way Kurogane's teeth gritted in pain; Fai's magic was still beckoning him from above the cliff, but there was _blood_ on the ash beast's claws - _blood_ and Ginryuu was out of the way -

He glanced up at the mountaintop, heart thudding in his chest, and then he bent over, Mokona squalling and digging her tiny baby claws into his shoulder, and picked up Kurogane's gun. He held it out toward the creature - narrowed his eyes, lining up his shot - fired. Watched the red bloom over Kurogane's face as the monster froze , then slumped on top of him heavily, bearing them both down to the ground; Kurogane's eyes were screwed up in pain, and Fai glanced up at the mountaintop, looking with his extra sight but not seeing...

Fai's magic had gone, like he was never there at all. Fai stood there, the water sleeting down the back of his neck, barely aware of Kurogane swearing under his breath as he maneuvered the dead ash beast off him. He was still staring up at the mountainside when Kurogane came to stand next to him, water dripping from the tips of his hair and his chin and his nose.

"What the fuck was that?" Kurogane demanded.

Fai didn't reply, so Kurogane grabbed his shoulder and spun him, then winced with pain and raised a hand to his chest; he was wearing black, but when he touched his chest his hand came away pink before the rain washed it clean. Fai let his eyes fall. "We need to find shelter," he said. In his ear Mokona was whimpering; his hood had come down and she was cold and wet. Carefully he fixed it back into place for her, but his movements were automatic, unthinking. Numb.

_Fai, Fai, Fai._

"Fine," Kurogane said. "This isn't the end of it. Let's backtrack to the place we spent last night. It's about an hour away."

He bent to pick up the bag of supplies from where he'd dumped it when the assault began, and his grimace of pain was unmistakable. Fai watched him wordlessly.

_Fai, Fai, Fai._

In the overhang, wedged uncomfortably close but at least without rain pouring down on their heads, Kurogane took his shirt off; the wound was glancing, but bloody. Fai went through their pack, retrieving the bandages from where they were kept in their waterproof box, and set about cleaning it out with the tiny bottle of stinging antiseptic - Kurogane didn't so much as wince - and drying the skin around the injury so the bandage would stay in place. Before it would have been weird, being this close to Kurogane while shirtless, and some part of him took measure of the man regardless - of his flat belly and heavily muscled arms, his wide shoulders, even the shy dusky pink of his small nipples - the dusting of dark hair under his arms and marching down from his navel - but all of it fell aside in favour of the voice in his head chanting _Fai Fai Fai Fai_.

Mokona was curled up on Kurogane's lap. The man wasn't even pushing her off; Kurogane was watching him, his eyes even brighter a shade of red than his blood. "What happened?" he asked quietly.

Fai quietly put the bandages back in their box, stored them back in the bag. Outside the rain was still sheeting down, but they were uphill, so there was little risk of them getting wet. He didn't speak immediately, and Kurogane didn't push him.

Was there even any point in keeping it? His secrets would matter less if he did die. Someone ought to know the truth, and why not Kurogane? He was unlikely to hate Fai the way he should, for some reason Fai didn't fully understand. He sighed and lifted his hands, running his fingers through his hair, and then closed his eyes, expelling a long breath, letting go.

"I was a twin," he said eventually.

* * *

"I was a twin," Fai said, in a glossy voice that had no connection to any tone Kurogane had heard from the idiot before. "An identical twin, in truth. Me and my brother, we were raised by our uncle in a village in the boondocks.

"The village was a tightknit one; I don't think there were more than fifteen families in it - and we tended to keep things like our faith a closely guarded secret from outsiders. My people were like that, which is I guess what made it easy for my uncle to sneak his bastardisation in. I think originally we were shamanistic - we worshipped the winter and nature, but I could never be sure, and... well, there weren't many of us left after my uncle. He drove the tribe's official shaman out many years before we were born, and he became the new shaman, preaching this... bizarre gospel.

"They say a cult is just a religion that doesn't have enough followers. My uncle's twisted version of truth was not a cult, then, officially. But it might as well have been. He preached about the innate superiority of the faithful over our invaders; he preached about the One Great Goddess, a mysterious figure of great power who was due, he said, to be born in mortal form. He said she knew everything that ever was and ever would be, and could see the very threads that tied us to our destiny. Maybe it started benevolent, you know, live your life as good people because that's what the One Great Goddess wants. All I know is, when we were born, the doctrine... changed.

"Suddenly twins were important figures in his canon. We were, he said, two sides of a coin; one twin was a Luck Child, whose blood would be necessary to absorb the... essence, I suppose, of the Goddess - to become an avatar, of sorts. The other was a _bad_ luck child, who needed to be slaughtered before he could bring misfortune upon the faithful, and whose death was necessary to begin the ritual."

"He killed your twin?" Kurogane guessed, but Fai shook his head. In Kurogane's lap, Mokona stirred; at a loss for what else to do, he carefully lifted the small white thing up and transferred her to Fai's, where she curled herself up in a tight little ball. Fai lowered a hand, stroking her fur softly.

"He used to set us little tests," Fai continued. "To try and figure which one of us was the Luck Child. Things like asking us to toss a coin, so he could measure our probabilities; or roll dice. I think our parents began to object. When I was six, he invited them over to a secret church meeting; and when they got home - we were staying with a neighbour - a burglar broke into our house. He tore the place up, and according to the official story, my parents arrived home right in the middle of the invasion. The burglar tied my parents up and... anyway. Their throats were slit. My uncle found the bodies the next morning.

"He received custody of us, of course, as our closest blood relative. He _pushed_ for it, in fact. And then the tests continued; coin flipping and dice-rolling, 'what number am I thinking of' and then harsher tests. He used to come into a room swinging his belt around; whichever of us he hit first was going to have worst luck, you see?

"The tests got worse. He really wanted to resurrect this avatar of his god, and it was really important to him to find out which twin was the unlucky one; he needed to have that twin killed before the poor luck could affect his ritual. But me and Fai, we were smart. We covered for each other as much as we could."

"You and Fai," Kurogane repeated quietly, and Fai turned and gave him a thin, worn-down, tired smile.

"My name is Yuui," he said, softly. "It means 'Bad Luck'. Theme naming, see?"

"What happened?" Kurogane pushed.

"Well. Eventually he got fed up. It came to him that if randomly lashing out with his belt helped find which one of us had the best luck, then surely doing the same thing with a knife would be quicker and more final. So he began his ritual preparations, channeling his magic and setting it all up; but unbeknownst to him, that amount of power triggered attention from the capital. The spell he used was the same as the resurrection spell, remember - the one that would break the world. Duke Ashura himself began investigations.

"As it happened, the King's council arrived just in time. He'd made his plans - he had a dagger and a blindfold, that was how sophisticated it was, at the end. He was just going to blindfold himself, lock us in the room, and..."

Fai looked away, swallowing heavily. Kurogane wanted to touch him; not violently, like before, a harsh thwack upside the head or a violent shake. But gently, somehow... He didn't know how. It wasn't something he'd ever done. "Go on," he said, instead, watching Fai's face very carefully in the weak grey storm light.

"We were both Witchblood," said Fai... Yuui, whatever. His voice was very quiet and thick. "I was a war mage, but Fai... Fai was a doctor. And the thing was, Fai wouldn't let us be separated. They tried; they wanted to send him off to the College to study medicine, and me to train under Ashura; but Fai refused and when they took me away from him he had a nervous breakdown. And I didn't want to be a war mage, anyway, I didn't... I didn't want to hurt anyone. So Ashura stepped in and he brokered a deal. He said I could stay with Fai - go to classes with him during the day, share a bedroom with him in the College dorms, live with him - but I had to attend War Mage tutoring in the evenings. I said yes, so long as Fai could come.

"So that was what we did, for a long time. I learned medicine during the day - I didn't have to, all they wanted of me was to turn up and stop Fai from freaking out, but it was... really interesting. At night I learned how to destroy a man with my magic, so I liked that during the day I was learning how to help put them back together."

Kurogane nodded. That sounded about right for Fai. He reached out and rested two fingers against the edge of Fai's boot, feeling awkward and stupid doing even that much, but unsure how to go about doing more. Fai watched him do so with no expression; Kurogane wasn't sure what that meant but decided to keep his hand where it was.

"Well, we graduated and they kept us at the Capital. We had this... little luxury apartment near the Palace, with a view of the Palace gardens and the river. Every day Fai went to work at the hospital, keeping appointments and doing typical doctor work - seeing patients referred by physicians around the country, you know? The ones normal medicine couldn't cure. Mostly cancer patients. He'd take their hands in his, and there'd just be this _glow_ , and he would smile this soft little smile and..."

He was crying, Kurogane realised; tears were rolling down his cheeks for all his steady voice. His hands were shaking slightly on Mokona's fur.

"Anyway. He liked to do that. I liked to watch him do it. And that was how it was, for a while; curing the sick and being okay, reading in our apartment and curling up with him to watch a film - I loved him so much, and he loved me, and it was... nobody was.... it was nice. But one day Ashura called an emergency Council meeting; and we gathered - all of us, he wouldn't let me bring Fai - and he gave out these photographs, and he said, 'We are in danger'. Just like that.

"He said this man - Fei Wang Reed - was attempting to perform resurrection magic; he said it was worse than my uncle. He said the amount of power this man had raised would utterly destroy the world and quite probably the universe. He said we needed to link together and fence him in, and that we would die doing it but it was better than losing everything, do you see? And he said we should go home and say goodbye to our families. So we did.

"I told Fai what was happening, and... and he went completely pale, white as a sheet. He said, 'No.' Just like that, too, all final and fierce. I told him I didn't have a choice, that this was my job like curing the sick was his, and he got this look on his face and said, 'Come here.'

"So I came, expecting perhaps a goodbye embrace; only when he touched me, my body was... it was weird. I could feel a sort of numbing sensation in my fingertips, and then I... and then I passed out, I think. He used his magic on me. _He_ used _his magic_ on _me_. I woke up on my bed, and I couldn't _move_ , my body was totally useless, and that... that was when I heard it."

"Heard what?" Kurogane asked, though he already expected. Fai looked at him, red-rimmed eyes and lost, torn expression; and he raised his hand to tug on his ponytail.

"The noise," he said. "Like scissors. _Snickt, snickt, snickt_. It was coming from the bathroom. I made a noise... I think I did, I don't remember, and he came out; and he was dressed up in _my_ uniform, Kurogane, with _my_ council insignia around his throat, and he had a pair of scissors in his hand and his hair... He'd cut it. Like mine, at the time. They used to make him grow his hair out, and me keep mine short. So they could tell us apart, you see?"

"Your brother took your place in the circle," Kurogane said, and Fai nodded, eyes downcast.

"Healing magic doesn't... it doesn't _mesh_ like that," he said. "He told me he loved me, and then he left. And then the first storm came, disintegrating people into dust and ash, and I knew - I knew he'd caused it, that I'd _let_ him cause it - my brother, my twin, he _destroyed the world_ \- and it's all my fault, I should have, I should have, I don't know, stopped him - I should have done more, but I - I -"

Kurogane sighed wearily, letting go of Fai's boot to pinch the bridge of his nose. Only this moron, he thought; only this moron could manage to turn his brother's actions into something to guilt over, something to torment himself with. Fai had lost the thread of whatever he was saying, was bent double over Mokona, crying himself out into her snowy white fur, and Kurogane wondered if he had ever stopped to mourn his twin. Perhaps he hadn't let himself. Perhaps he'd felt guilty for even wanting to.

"Hey," he said, reaching out awkwardly. Fai was still weeping, and Kurogane wanted him to stop it, wanted it with an urgency he barely recognised. He knew enough to know that this wasn't something that could be stomped by a harsh _whomp_ , and before he knew quite what he was doing, he had a lock of Fai's damp hair between his fingers, honey-dark while wet and sleek. Soft, like seal fur. Fai didn't appear to have noticed.

This was it, Kurogane knew. This was the linchpin, the thing that bound Fai together, kept him smothered in his own misery. All that time, the smiles, the laughing; all to hide how much he hated himself. Guilt for not stopping his twin, mingled with unresolved, stagnant grief; terror and loathing all united to form a solid core of self-hatred. That had been why he fled the village, convinced everyone else saw him how he saw himself.

It was sad and it was inevitable and it was so fucking _Fai_. Kurogane sighed, rolling that lock of damp blond hair between his fingers. Mokona was flicking her ears, looking a little alarmed at the torrent of tears being poured out into her fur.

"C'mon," Kurogane said. "You're gonna drown that fox. Look at me, idiot."

Fai did, although his expression was bleak. Kurogane sighed and let go of that lock of hair, inching closer to the idiot to draw him into an embrace, and realised very quickly that it wasn't going to work. Fai was stiff and unyielding under his arms, and fuck, it wasn't like Kurogane was the hugging type. He was probably screwing it up somehow. They were so close - Fai's damp clothing was cool and rough against his shirtless upper half, and he could feel Fai's eyelashes against his clavicle when he blinked. It was resolving nothing.

"Kurogane," Fai said, and Kurogane could feel some of the old aloofness trying to creep back into the idiot's voice; Fai was beginning to tense further, preparing to draw away from him, and Kurogane was sick of the moron constantly trying to rebuild his fucking walls. He'd broken in front of Kurogane, let Kurogane _in_ : only Kurogane hadn't said the right thing, somehow; done whatever it was that needed to be done to break those damn walls down. To make Fai put the mask aside forever.

"Wait," he said. "Wait. I..."

Fai lifted his face from Kurogane's shoulder, looking at him with one eye raised and a slight smile on his face that was so fake it almost made Kurogane gag. Kurogane reached out, settled a hand over the nape of Fai's neck, then hesitated. They were so close. He could... He could just move, that last inch, and...

"Kurogane?"

What the hell. If the fox cub had served as a distraction, so would this. Kurogane leaned forward and kissed Fai, the way he'd been thinking about while cutting up the ash beast yesterday; a proper kiss like in the movies, their noses mashed together and his tongue darting out, forcing Fai's lips open - a kiss like on the big screen, biting and devouring -

\- And Fai recoiled from him, wide-eyed.

Fuck.

"Kurogane?" Fai was staring at him incredulously, raising a hand to touch his fingertips to his lips. "What was that?"

"It was supposed to be a _kiss,_ " Kurogane groused. "Like in the films."

"Oh," Fai said. He smiled - not false-cheerful, but watery and soft, more a quirk of his lips than anything else; his eyes were clear and shining faintly. "I thought maybe you were attempting to suck my teeth out of my mouth or something." He wiped the pad of his thumb over his lower lip. "Did you _bite_ me?"

"You're not supposed to?"

“No,” Fai said. He wasn’t exactly smiling, still - but his eyes were brighter. Kurogane swallowed and looked away.

“Sorry,” he said gruffly. “It’s not -”

Not something I’ve got much experience with, he thought. Not something I’ve ever really done before. I don’t know.

Fai huffed out a breath, soft and warm against Kurogane’s face. “Don’t,” he said gently. He leaned forward. “Please don’t... Kuro-sama.”

His lips were soft on Kurogane’s, and this time Kurogane was the one who held still as Fai kissed him, so careful and so sweet it took all of Kurogane’s willpower not to grab his hair by the handful and yank him in closer. He closed his eyes and tilted his head to the side, parting his lips, letting Fai show him what it was the mage liked; at the same time he cautiously moved his hands - curling one around the sharpness of Fai’s hipbone _there_ , the other skating curiously over Fai’s shoulder. Fai was so _warm_ despite the dampness of his clothing, and Kurogane had thought about this yesterday - an age ago, with blood up to his elbows and a heart in the palm of his hand, and it was fine.

It was more than fine, actually. He could feel the interest, a slow sparking inside his belly, dragging south; felt himself beginning to harden. Pressed close as they were there was no way Fai could miss it, and indeed Fai broke the kiss, his lips ghosting along Kurogane’s cheek, over toward his ear, before he said, softly, “I... I’m sorry. That’s enough for me, right now.”

“Okay,” Kurogane said, because it was. There was more to this than fucking. He could whack one out quickly if it came to that; but Fai was so fragile against his skin, and Kurogane was... not in the mood to waste this. He lifted a hand, brushed some of Fai’s hair away from his eyes, and then slid his arms around the idiot, giving him a simple tug, pulling him close.

For a while they sat there like that, Fai relaxing gradually against him, warm and still, but not stiff and resisting the way he’d been; he was Fai. Mokona wriggled her way to freedom from between them, sneezing in distaste, and Kurogane felt Fai smile softly against his shoulder.

“Thank you,” Fai said softly. Kurogane snorted, shifting to rest his cheek against the idiot’s hair.  
He could feel the anxiety ebbing away from Fai as he held him, and it was kind of strange how he couldn’t keep himself from pressing his lips against the crown of the idiot’s head, not even a kiss so much as a nuzzle. All that time. All that time they’d been bickering, and now here Fai was, broken-hearted and too exhausted to keep pretending, and Kurogane didn’t hate him despite what he’d revealed; didn’t think he could, not really. In many respects he’d been right. Behind the banality of Fai’s false smiles and charms, someone smart and good-natured had been lurking in hiding.

Still. It couldn’t all be holding Fai and breathing in the scent of him. There were still important things to be discussed. “Back in the mountains,” he said, slowly, and felt the sudden lack of ease in Fai’s body language; he didn’t continue, waited patiently for Fai to decide what to do.

“I’m sorry,” Fai said, muffled. “I thought I... I thought I felt Fai’s magic.”

That was not the answer Kurogane had been expecting, although it did explain the idiot’s reaction. “Is that possible?”

Fai shook his head. “I felt my brother _die_ , Kuro-sama,” he said, wearily, and Kurogane couldn’t keep from giving him a gentle squeeze, reassurance without words. Just the way he liked it. Fai pressed his face further into the heavy bulk of Kurogane’s shoulder.

“I felt his magic,” Fai repeated. “I forgot myself. I’m sorry.”

“If it wasn’t your brother, who could it be?” Kurogane demanded. “Could it be something similar?”

“No. I _know_ Fai’s magic, Kuro-sama.”

“So I’m back to that again, huh?” Kurogane couldn’t keep the teasing tone from his voice if he tried, and grinned as Fai ducked his head, long blond hair hiding his eyes. “Where was this battle between this Reed guy and your brother? Could we be coming up to the site now?”

Fai jerked back, his eyes wide. “We might be. I don’t know where it was. Ashura was supposed to tell us when... we we got back...” He bit his lip and Kurogane raised a hand, brushing his hair out of his eye again. _Fuck_ he had it bad.

“So maybe what you felt was the place where your twin died,” he said, keeping his voice low, and Fai looked at him with speechless pain. Kurogane licked his lips. “Want to find it and say goodbye?”

“... He destroyed the world, Kuro-sama,” Fai said quietly. “I shouldn’t -”

“Bullshit,” Kurogane said flatly. “He was your twin. You loved him. He loved you, enough to do something stupid to try to save you. You should say your goodbyes.”

Fai looked away. “I spent so long not knowing... how he could put me in this position,” he said quietly. “How he could make me be the survivor.”

Privately Kurogane thought it was a dick move, and not just because it had apparently caused the apocalypse. But he also thought saying such would be a bad move, and... he could kind of see why the dead twin, the one whose name Fai wore, had made that choice. The dead Fai had loved his brother, and though love didn’t make it okay, it made it more... understandable. Fai didn’t need to hear his twin blamed.

“I’ll go with you,” he said, and then, hesitantly: “After that we could... start making our way back to the village.”

And Fai looked at him for a long, long moment, his blue eyes inscrutable, and then said what Kurogane was hoping to hear: “Yes.”

* * *

Fai didn’t know what he was expecting, when they scaled the ridge. If this was the place where his brother had died - it had been five years; maybe there would be bodies. Skeletons picked clean by time, left where they had died. The plan would have been simple; surround the madman, anchor yourself to each other and the very earth, allow the explosion of power to burn through you and ground itself - there would be some collateral damage in the real world, of course, an explosion of physical power, but the spell would have been diverted in a mostly harmless manner.

Probably Fai had been disintegrated. It made sense. It just made his throat close and his arms twitch forward, wrapping around himself, because the thought was not one he liked. Kurogane was at his side, though; they’d left the pack at the overhang where they’d spent last night - no more sleeping back to back; they’d shared a sleeping bag, Kurogane chaste and respectful, Fai pillowing his head on the man’s thick bicep and thought, _He doesn’t hate you_ and smiled to himself in the darkness at the way his heart fluttered and thudded.

 _I can do this,_ Fai thought. _I can say goodbye._

Still, he could feel that unnamed terror on his tongue, bitter and choking; his belly was a tight roiling bundle of nerves, and only Kurogane’s presence beside him kept him from turning right around and going back. There was a lot of stuff in the village he wasn’t looking forward to - he’d run away, they would be _so mad_ at him (and part of him, he knew with his adult mind, was always going to be the scared child terrified of making the adults _angry_ ) but he’d rather go back to the village and face their hate than find Fai’s bones here on this mountaintop.

Kurogane was right, though. He needed to let go.

The ridge wasn’t that high-up, considering, but there was no direct route there. They had to backtrack and take a winding, zig-zagging path up the mountain, each step straining their calves; Kurogane didn’t look bothered by it, but then again that was who he was, obscenely at ease with physical strain. He trotted up the mountainside like it was nothing, like a goat, Ginryuu at his hip in her scabbard but otherwise unburdened. Fai himself carried the gun in its holster, and Mokona rode in his hood like she always did. He was kind of looking forward to fetching _her_ back to the village; Subaru would love to see her, he knew that for sure.

“Huh,” Kurogane said, covering his eyes with one hand. “Looks like a storm’s on the way.”

It was gathering in the horizon, a sullen blood-red sky, clouds swirling dark and thick. Fai breathed out through his nose and touched the mask around his neck, and Kurogane glanced at him. “Let’s go,” Fai said, shortly. “I’d like to get there and back before the storm hits.”

They resumed their climb. There was a strange feeling to the air, a kind of tension that sang in Fai’s bones; grimly Fai pushed himself onward, Kurogane keeping pace with him like it took no effort whatsoever. They crested the top of the hill together in silence, and Fai stood there for a moment, catching his breath back and scanning the mountain meadow. Here, here was where he had sensed Fai’s magic before... Here was where, then, Fai must have died.

It was a perfectly ordinary field now. Green lush grass rippled in the wind of the oncoming ash storm; blue wildflowers dotted the surroundings. Fai let out a soft breath, a sad one. He hadn’t known what to expect, but this pretty, scenic location was not it. He took a step forward and stopped at the sound of scraping metal.

Kurogane was hunkered low, red eyes fierce and predatory. He was drawing Ginryuu, his sword humming as she left her sheath. If he’d been a dog, his hackles would have been raised. Fai stared at him, startled, and then back at the meadow, with its greenery and its flowers. “Kuro-sama?”

Red eyes flicked toward him. “Don’t you feel it?”

“What?”

Kurogane growled impatient, pulled the sword free. “There’s something wrong with this place.”

Fai looked back at their surroundings; still silent, the breeze the only noise as it blew gently through the plants. It caught his hair and his clothing, sending them flapping around his body. “I don’t sense anything,” he said, with some disappointment. He sensed nothing of Fai.

Kurogane was looking at him in exasperation. “I’m not talking about _that_ ,” he said. “Why are there flowers? We can’t even get a half-decent crop of potatoes back home.”

It was like the scenery suddenly came into perspective; the velvetty grass, the picturesque wildflowers, out on the ridge at the mercy of five years’ worth of ash storms. Fai backed up a step, then another. No bones, just plants that should not be here; _could_ not be here...

He bent down to touch one of the flowers, feel its petals beneath his fingers. His fingers passed right through it. “Illusion,” he breathed.

“That your brother’s area of expertise?” Kurogane demanded. His sword was poised, sharp-edged and lethal; he was turning slow, careful circles, scanning the perimeter. Fai shook his head.

“No. Not at all. Hold on, let me try to dispel it.”

He raised a hand, calling on the magic in his veins; instead of the reins to the magic he had been taught to use - harnessed, steady, there for his use - the wild magic surged to meet him, curious and sharp as a wolf.

 _I just need to borrow of you,_ he begged. _Just for a little spell._

The magic churned around him as if pondering it over; then he felt it settle, a small thread he could use. He raised a hand and began etching runes as quickly as he could, pushing the wild magic through him, himself as a conduit; it allowed it for perhaps three runes out of five before it grew restless again, and as a consequence those last two runes flared unevenly, jagged and peculiar, unnatural against their more steady brothers.

 _Please be enough,_ he thought. Kurogane was watching him, red eyes cool and sharp, and it had been so long since Fai had cast this spell with a witness; he didn't even know if it would work properly. He had to try. He'd felt Fai here, yesterday, and he needed to _know_...

He closed his eyes and set the spell into motion, and he felt more than heard the wind spiralling out from him, the wind that tore the grass and the wildflowers away - but he definitely heard Kurogane's low growl. He could _feel_ the sudden alertness from the man, and when he opened his eyes, he was already expecting... something.

The meadow had vanished. In its place was a wind-swept mountain plain, dusty sand under his boots and towering cliffs along the edge; one side dipping down, the other rising steeply to the next plateau. In the middle of what had been the grass was a... a thing.

"Ash beast," Kurogane said in a low voice, Ginryuu brought to bear against this new foe, but Fai... Fai didn't think so. It was pink-skinned, for one; it had seven appendages, for another, long spindly legs, two extra legs unfolding from its shoulders, rat-tail hairless and stiff. Its mouth was just a round tube, glistening and gaping open, and its eyes were mismatched, one bright gold and slit-pupilled and the other a shiny beetle-black, swollen and staring. It had been hunkered low to the ground, but as if sensing Fai's gaze on it, it began moving, standing stiffly upright on all , and then -

It stood up, slowly, on its hind legs, like a man.

Its pink skin was smooth and unmarked, but it didn't look like human skin - it was rough and unyielding, like shark hide. Jutting out of its chest was a shard of some sort of glowing blue glass, a crystal maybe, like someone had tried to stab the beast with it... but the crystal stank of Fai, so strongly Fai staggered back a few steps, putting his hands out in front of his face and turning his head away. There was no doubting it. This thing had been the source of the Fai-magic last night.

"What is it?" Kurogane demanded, as it curled its talons forward and tilted its square head on its long neck. He crouched down low, blade at the ready.

"I don't know," Fai said, in a small voice. "But - but it stinks of Fai. Kuro-sama, I think it was a man..."

"Is it dangerous?" Kurogane demanded warily, his boots scraping over the sand as he sidestepped. The monster turned its head on its long neck to follow him, and raised one of the hands from its shoulder-arms. It only had three digits on that hand, but as Fai watched it snapped them and...

And the wild magic swirled to its side immediately, coiling around the man-thing's ankles like a well-trained puppy.

"Assume yes," Fai said, staring, and that was all the encouragement Kurogane needed. With a roar he darted forward, his boots pounding over the dusty sand as he charged the monster, blade swept up and along at the side - Fai took a step forward, shocked, his mouth moving too slow to even shout his caution as Kurogane leapt, sword swinging down in a killing blow -

The wild magic surged before Fai's very eyes. Kurogane's blade scraped off an invisible wall mid-air, and the monster casually swiped him out of the air with one of its arms, sending him flying; with typical poise Kurogane righted himself _midair_ and landed on his feet, boots digging a little trough in the dust as he slid to a halt.

"Tch," he snarled, low and angrier than Fai had ever heard from him before. "C'mon, you bastard!"

"Kuro-sama, careful!" Fai snapped. "It's protected by the wild magic!"

"I know," Kurogane called back. "I can _see_ it. Can you do anything about that, mage?"

Fai didn't know, but he knew he needed to try. _Why are you doing this?_ he asked the magic urgently, blinked in surprise as it turned to regard him. The monster roared, something Kurogane returned with gusto; it dropped back to its hands and feet and squatted, launching itself toward the warrior, who dodged with contemptuous ease. _Please, tell me what's going on!_

He could feel the magic's thoughtfulness, a change in the tone of the air; then abruptly something in it _flexed_ and when he opened his eyes - he saw the giant monster, claws scything through the air, Kurogane ducking and attempting to parry -

And he saw Reed, the man who had attempted the resurrection spell.

The two were occupying the same space at once, sort of like an optical illusion; the monster swung, Kurogane ducked and slashed back, Reed blocked _that_ and riposted with a steel blade. Fai stared, feeling his mouth falling open - watching as Reed, taller even than Kurogane - darted in low with a stab that suddenly became the monster's talons shooting in to disembowel Kurogane, and the enormity of what he was dealing with nearly knocked his breath away.

He'd always wondered, in an academic sort of way, if no humans had been affected by the first storm the way the animals had. If there had been any humans, caught and mutated, twisted into monsters. Here was his answer.

 _How did this happen?_ he asked the magic, bewildered. _How could this happen?_

Smugly, it replied, _You did it._

The monster recoiled from a strong blow that sent sparks flying between Kurogane's sword and its invisible barrier; it dug its claws into the ground and _roared_ , chest puffed, blue crystal glowing.

 _Fai_ , he thought, and then, _Fai!_

He cupped his hands over his mouth, roared, "Kuro-sama!"

" _What_?"

"Keep it busy!"

"What the fuck do you think I'm doing?" Kurogane yelled back, but his blood was up, berserker fury in his red eyes, and he was beginning to grin as he slashed in sideward, another shuddering blow that sent _ripples_ through Reed's barrier like the world itself was made of water.

If the crystal had something to do with Fai - war magic and healing magic had never really been meshable, but Fai was his _twin_ \- he drew the first rune in the air, infusing it with all the things he had never said; _I love you and I miss you and I'm sorry_ , calling on the wild magic with his oh-so-human emotions, felt it respond with curiosity. _Show me how that crystal came to be._

It seethed around him, a buzzing in his ears like he'd suffered a concussion; and then abruptly it died down. He opened his eyes and started violently, for that was _Fai_ there, dressed in his clothes with his insignia around his throat, his newly short hair gleaming as he stood on the mountaintop dispassionately looking through Reed and Kurogane's fight like it wasn't there at all.

It wasn't, not then.

To the left of Fai, another man stood; the wild magic hadn't liked him, he was barely more than pencil sketches in the air - but Fai recognised him. Ashura. He stood with aloof dignity, his staff in the crook of his arm, his hair tied away from his face; and around them in a ring were five other pencil-figures. The faceless last stand of the Council of Seven, Fai thought, then clapped a hand over his face, watching intently.

_Show me what happened._

Ashura lifted his staff and drew the same pattern in the air that Fai had to break the illusion of the meadow. The runes didn't show, but Fai could recognise them. His twin... the real Fai... was stood stiff and poised, and it was hard to tear his eyes away when in the middle room _Reed_ appeared - as he had been, not this tormented monster. He was taller than all of these men and women by far, held a sword in one hand; his face and clothes were streaked with blood, but otherwise he looked like the photograph Ashura had given them. Above the gathering the sky churned, the force of Reed's magic warping the weather systems.

(Kurogane and the monster ran right through the shadowy tableux, exchanging blows like hammers; Fai's heart seized in sudden panic when Kurogane took a slash to the arm but he shrugged it off like it was nothing, and this was _important_ , important like - like nothing else this fight.)

Words were exchanged. The wild magic hadn't cared enough to memorise sound, and Fai had never been a great lip reader; he thought he recognised Ashura reading the madman his formal charges, recognised when he'd reached the bit about _sentencing_ by the way the other Council members brandished their staves stiffly - except for Fai, who glanced around the circle and then copied them. Fai's heart clenched.

He watched as his friends closed their eyes - began to link together, forming the circle; Reed threw his head back and laughed, a good deep belly laugh from the look of it. And now there was sound, glitchy and alternating too loud - too quiet like a busted recording: _You don't think that I didn't expect this?_ Reed's eyes glittered.

(Kurogane rolled over the terrain, dodging a blow that would have broken bones; his sword licked out, scraped off the barrier. He _tched_ and rolled away, prepared to come in again.)

The Council wizards didn't respond, busy digging in their roots to the ground, linking themselves to each other. Ashura raised his staff, and though there was a shortage of detail on the wild magic's image of him, Fai knew at once the soft, formal look in his eyes, the brave way he had been prepared to face this. His lips moved; the other wizards held their staffs up to mirror him. Fai copied them hurriedly, poker-faced, the same expression he'd had the first time he'd worked the emergency room shift - when that boy had come in bleeding to death and he was the only doctor on hand. _You idiot,_ Fai thought, staring at this image of his twin, and there was love and grief both behind his words. _You idiot._

Reed's lip curled away from his teeth. _I have a goal, you understand. You cannot keep me from bringing her back. But I thank you. I needed more power and here you are!_

He casually began rolling back his sleeves, like a bar patron just before he hauled off and punched someone, and his grin was the furthest thing from reassuring. Ashura's lips moved, but it was his twin and Reed Fai had eyes for; he watched the sudden surprise and uncertainty on Fai's face - the way he turned his head toward Ashura, perhaps to say something -

And then Reed held out his hands and set forth his power, just like they had anticipated - only Fai saw immediately that it was nothing at all like they'd anticipated. Nothing at all.

This was no casual spell, no outward explosion of power. _Blast containment,_ he'd called the Council's tactic, and that had been what it was, what they were doing right before his eyes; but as he watched Reed's spell _changed_. It became focused, targeted on one of the wizards in the circle; all of them cried out, even Fai, forced into sharing the unidentifiable wizard's pain as Reed literally tore his or her magic out of their body.

 _Was it Eagle?_ Fai wondered, swallowing heavily. _Eagle, with his scrying magic and his serious eyes? Or perhaps - Karen, who used to perform magic tricks for Taishakuten's sons?_

He would never know which of them had been the first to fall. Because of course they had underestimated Reed; they should have realised - any wizard that powerful would have had to be expecting interference, would have had to _budget_ for it, and if you were mad, if you wanted to collect power to try and tear apart the wall between the world of the living and the dead, _the Council of Seven represented one of the greatest natural resources around._

Fai averted his eyes, not wanting to watch as Reed continued draining his friends, all of them trapped in a feedback loop, shuddering with pain and helpless before that kind of spell. He didn't want to see...

(Kurogane jumped, landing on top of the barrier; he kept Ginryuu bared but didn't try slashing - pulled his back-up gun from its holster on his other hip and aimed straight, emptying the clip right into the shield. Reed snorted in amusement.)

He made himself watch, in the end. It was hard, but even though the outlines were so indistinct - even though he had no idea who was who - they had been his _friends_. He watched as they fell, one by one; even Ashura, more solid than most, disintegrating into dust and ash as Reed tore out his power.

It had been years, and still that tore at Fai's heart.

Fai was the last standing, holding his staff and looking Reed solidly in the face; there were tears on his cheeks.

 _Don't look at me LIKE THAT, BOY,_ Reed said, in a jovial sort of tone like he was some kind of fucking grandfather. _The Witch is more important than your friends. Their sacrifice was -_

 _I can feel you pawing at my magic,_ Fai replied, and Fai chest contracted painfully tightly at his voice - so like his own, but softer - calmer. For a moment it was hard to breathe. _It's alright. I'm a liar, too._

Reed paused - and then his eyes widened. Fai smiled, peacefully, kindly. _Can't stop it now,_ he said. _It's the wrong magic. You're not the only one playing pretend, Mister Reed._

 _What are you doing here?_ Reed demanded, the smug expression wiped off his face; his hands were moving, spilling out errant flicks of magic as he tried frantically to backpedal. His twin lowered his stolen staff and padded closer; bits of him were streaming away, melting into the air. He was in pain, Fai realised; he had that look on his face like he'd worn when they were children, open-handed blows and hot candle wax - but he wasn't backing down.

Fai didn't know which of them was truly the Luck Child out of them, but all his life he had known Fai was the braver of them both.

 _It's alright,_ Fai said again, gently, like he was talking to a child. He reached out, curling long fingers over Reed's wrist; Reed tried to shrug him off, looking horrified, but it was too late.

_You don't UNDERSTAND, YOU'LL DESTROY everything! Your magic is the wrong kind! The wrong kind!_

_Yes,_ Fai agreed. _But at least the universe will stay whole. There will be some survivors. It's called triage, Mister Reed._

Magic thundered around them, shooting straight up into the sky, but Fai could see that it was glitchy, threatening to collapse. His throat was closing. _Triage,_ he thought. _Determining patient treatment order by the severity of their conditions._ It was such a doctor's mindset, picking the least lethal apocalypse.

The power roiled around him, but Fai watched it all with dry eyes; as it exploded, Fai's magic corrupting all of Reed's reservoir, forcing it back on him. His twin dissolved into ash before his eyes; but he went with a smile, blue eyes closed and peacefully; Reed yelped and _shoved_ , trying to keep Fai's essence from being absorbed - but it was too late. Fai didn't need to see the rest. His studies had taught him what happened when a wizard lost control of his spell; it backfired on the wizard, sometimes causing physical damage, and screwed up the local magic field. Sometimes weather changes could be a part of that.

This was just on a bigger scale.

 _Triage_ , indeed.

The illusory figures faded, and the monster Reed was now came into clearer focus; stoop-shouldered, immense. Kurogane was still going at the thing; as Fai blinked the hotness of tears out of his vision he saw the man roar something deep and throaty, let loose with a powerful sword stroke that ought by rights to have cut Reed in half.

"Kuro-sama," he called, then again when this didn't get Kurogane's attention. "Kuro-sama!"

" _What_?"

"You need to get that crystal out of his chest!"

"What?" Kurogane reversed his charge and darted back, somersaulting through the air until he landed next to Fai in a crouch. " _Why_?"

"It's Fai's magic," Fai said grimly. " _Healing_ magic. Reed can't _exist_ , Kuro-sama, he's... held together by nothing more than magic and malice. That crystal is what's holding him together - we have to get it out!"

"Got a plan to get through that barrier then?" Kurogane snarled. The wind was whipping at his clothes; his face was streaked with ash and blood, and Fai stared at him, speechless and suddenly afraid for him. He was so brave.

"No," he said.

" _Tch!_ "

Reed came charging at them then; Kurogane shoved Fai roughly aside and lunged at the man, teeth gritted as he parried a crushing blow with Ginryuu. Fai etched out some fire runes - they backfired and fizzled out mid air.

 _Will you just fucking work with me here?_ he roared at the wild magic, which giggled at him and resumed twining around Reed's legs, except -

Some of it was shadowing Kurogane too.

"C'mon, you bastard, stop fucking cheating!" Kurogane bellowed. He _heaved_ \- Reed skittered back a step, shaking his malformed head - and Kurogane roared, " _Hama ryuu-oujin!_ "

There was no mistaking the blast of power that issued forth from him then. Channeled into his sword, the raw strike of power was sufficient to toss Reed back several paces; the monster landed on his side and began climbing slowly back to his feet, shook himself all over and blinked.

"What the hell was that?" Fai yelled.

Kurogane glanced at him in surprise. "My dad's sword technique," he said. He scowled. "Not doing much damage -"

"Kuro-sama, are you _kidding_? _That was magic!_ " Fai roared. "You should've said -"

"I've used it before just in this fight!" Kurogane hollered back. "You were busy, I don't know, staring off into fucking space -"

"Do it again!" Fai yelled. Reed lifted his head, saw them, and _hissed_ ; Fai scrambled over the dusty ground. "Do it _again_!"

Kurogane gave Fai a look like he was an idiot, then turned - brought his sword around, shouted the words -

No mistaking it. Magic.

Red eyes, Fai thought. Red eyes - I _don't remember_ but it's important -

The monster roared and charged, its feet thudding over the stony ground; Kurogane growled low and deep in his throat and danced forward, Ginryuu a steel blur, seeming an extension of his arm as he swung - hit the barrier, scraped off -

 _Help him,_ Fai ordered the wild magic, desperate: _Help him, don't follow him around if you won't -_

Reed swung _hard_ ; Kurogane, over-extended from a lunge, wasn't able to bring his sword around to block in time. The blow sent him backward. No righting himself mid-air this time; he scrambled to climb back on his feet, winced and touched his abdomen, and Fai's physician's mind flashed, terrified, to the damage that could be done by a blow - internet bleeding, broken ribs, lung damage - the list rolled on.

 _Come on!_ he demanded his heart pounding out his fear and his anger, and when he drew his runes this time they didn't spark out.

It wasn't a direct assault. He knew better than to try that. Instead he took the magic into himself - gasped and choked with the pain of it, the wild magic subduing to him but kicking and fighting the entire time - and tried to tame it, tried to feed Kurogane the power; he bent forward weakly in the dust - coughed, wet, racking coughs, felt like he was being _shredded_ inside - took hold of the magic with both hands metaphorically and _yanked_. Kurogane was shaking himself off.

 _Listen to me,_ he thought. _Listen to me. That man will win. That man must win. You will serve him, you_ will _serve him or - or - or I will_ make _you serve him, I will never rest -_

As threats went it was kind of pathetic, all the more so with blood in his mouth, pooling on his tongue; Kurogane brought Ginryuu up to shoulder height and he was so goddamn brave and forgiving and kind - Fai wasn't going to just let him go, Fai wasn't going to have died for _nothing_ , Fai wasn't - Fai was him and his brother and Kurogane was Kurogane and Reed, Reed was nothing at all.

"Kuro-ash!" he called, his voice weak in his own ears. Kurogane turned, did a double-take; Fai spat out another mouthful of blood, wiped his mouth clean with his sleeve. " _Hit him_!"

In his other sight Kurogane _blazed_ , wild magic settling around him like a mantle, like a crown; red, for the vibrancy of his eyes. There was worry in them now, naked and unashamed. _The ways in which we change each other,_ Fai thought, and smiled.

"Go on," he said, gentle like his twin. "It'll be okay. I'll live through this. Attack him."

And Kurogane, trusting, trusting at _last_ , turned away.

" _Hama ryuu-oujin!_!"

The blow was potent enough before. With the wild magic playing nice for him, it was _devastating_. Reed screamed as his barrier shattered; Ginryuu carried on, biting deeply into the meat of his belly, severing the talons from one of his extra pair of arms when he reached to block it. Blood spouted over the dusty floor, and for a moment they remained poised, pink monster and dark warrior, under the red-stained sky.

Then Kurogane let go of Ginryuu's hilt with one hand - reached over the blade like it was nothing, and plucked the crystal out of Reed's chest with his bare hand. He turned it over, confused; Reed shuddered and roared, lashing out violently, and he had to let go of Ginryuu to duck out of the way in time.

"Give me the crystal!" Fai heard himself call. "Kuro-sama -"

"My _sword_ ," Kurogane yelled back, crossly. "My sword!"

"The _crystal_!" Fai said, and with a low growl that was so oddly typical of him, Kurogane tossed it over to him; shining and blue and glowing. As soon as Fai caught it it brightened. Unlike the wild magic, the magic of this crystal felt happy to see him. "Hello, you," he said, and smiled down at it, cupped between his palms; he was surprised to realise he was weeping - only noticed when a tear splashed down over the crystal, which brightened in his grip. It was a little piece of Fai and it was in his hands.

Ahead of him Reed snarled; he'd climbed to his feet, was scanning the area. His gaze zeroed in on the crystal and he growled, jaws falling open; blood was still pouring down his body, spattering over the dirt. Fai turned his brother's magic over in his hands, raised the crystal to his mouth and pressed his lips against it, then held it out right in front of him as Reed lurched toward him.

He knew what he had to do. And by the sudden stiff way Kurogane jerked, he'd realised too.

 _Triage,_ Fai thought, and this time when he called the magic came to him, impressed despite itself. The crystal was warm in his hands and Reed was picking up speed; Kurogane was beginning to move too, looking alarmed, and Fai smiled even as he shaped the spell in his mind.

He waited until Reed was practically on top of him before he detonated the crystal, and the blast of power was stronger even than he anticipated, Reed shrieking as he finally died. It was so _bright_ , glow blinding-white, and he instinctively raised his hands to block - screamed, despite himself, felt like his face was being flayed off -

In the distance, Kurogane roared his name.

And then the white shimmered into blackness, and he felt nothing at all.

* * *

Kurogane came awake suddenly, his eyes flying open despite himself. It took him a while to work out that what he was looking at was not in fact the after-images of the explosion; it was a ceiling, painted a spotless white but with white rafters marching across it.

He sat up, reaching for his sword, but she wasn't there. Unnerved, he rolled to his feet - and he was barefoot, what the fuck? Barefoot and dressed in _white_. There was a serious colour scheme issue going on here.

It looked like a normal living room, with clean white walls; a fire burned in a white marble fireplace, a white rug in front of it on top of a white floor. Two armchairs were placed, facing the fire, their backs to Kurogane. Needless to say, they too were white. A white coffee table rested between them, empty.

"I see you're awake," said a woman's voice, and Kurogane growled and twitched. "Oh, don't be so paranoid, Mr. Black. Let's talk, you and I."

A black glove extended from the side of the armchair and beckoned lazily toward the other one; ignoring the obvious gesture to sit down, Kurogane padded cautiously around the chair, his feet whispering over the rug. The woman in the armchair smiled at him, sharp and warm. She was tall, for a woman, and wearing a black dress, but she wasn't sitting in the chair properly; her legs were tucked up along beside her, her dark hair bound away from her face in exquisite braids. She held a long pipe in one loose hand, and her eyes were bright red.

"Well," she said. "Here you are."

Kurogane looked away, at the surroundings. The fire spat and crackled on the hearth. "I'm dead," he guessed, and the woman laughed. She had a pretty good laugh - high, but sharp and warm.

"Not quite," she said. "Are you sure you don't want to sit down?"

"No. Where's my sword?"

She blew out a stream of smoke reflectively, watching as it coiled away in the air. "Wherever you left it, I suppose. But we're not here to talk of your sword, Mr. Black. My name is Yuuko. I am a Witch, of a sort."

"Yeah?" Kurogane squinted at her suspiciously. "What kind of 'witch'? Witchblood? Weather-witch? Dreamseer?"

"Yes," Yuuko said. She smiled at him like a cat in amidst the pigeons. "What do you remember?"

Kurogane hesitated, touching his palm to his temple. "That lunatic _thing_ attacking us," he said slowly. "I pulled out the crystal, and..." He frowned. "Where's that blond idiot?"

Yuuki raised a gloved hand and pointed across to the other armchair, and Kurogane turned and then did a double take. He'd been quite sure it was empty. Now it held Fai, propped up against one of the arms and covered in blood. It matted his hair and dripped off his chin, spatters of it bright red against the fabric. Kurogane was by the idiot's side before he could think.

"Hey," he said, reaching out and tapping the moron's cheek, rolling his head back. Most of the blood was coming from his closed eyes, leaking down his cheeks like tears; Fai was unconscious, pliant and unresisting under Kurogane's touch. Kurogane gritted his teeth, fumbled for a pulse. It was there, shallow but still going.

"He destroyed Fei," Yuuko said behind him, calm like there wasn't a man bleeding to death in her armchair. "It wasn't enough to remove the crystal of his brother's healing magic from Fei's body. The crystal had to be destroyed as well, and to do that he had to be holding it."

Kurogane scowled, his fingers spidering over Fai's chest as he checked him out for other injuries. "What the hell are we doing here, 'witch?'" he demanded, bitterly. "Unless you can fucking heal him -"

"So rude!" Yuuko puffed at her pipe, and now Kurogane turned to glare at her over his shoulder. She was watching him, the corners of her lips turned up and her eyes almost seeming to glow. "I do not possess the healing arts myself, Mr. Black. But I know someone who does."

"You do!" Kurogane's gaze snapped to hers; his hands tightened on Fai's sleeves. "Where are they? Call them!"

Yuuko breathed out a curling plume of smoke. The glow had gone from her eyes; now they were cool and hard. "There will be a price," she said. "I do not do things for _free_ , Youou Kurogane."

Kurogane stared as she unfolded her legs, coming gracefully to her feet. She was barefoot too, and wearing a furisode of all things, a glitzy design of black silk embroidered with silver butterflies. Had she been wearing that when he first saw her? Kurogane realised he couldn't remember and didn't care.

"I'll pay," he said. "I don't got any money, we don't use that anymore. But anything you want, I'll pay."

She tilted her head to one side. "What if I asked for Ginryuu?" she said.

Kurogane swallowed. "You can have it," he said. "We - we got a fox kit, last of its kind that we know of, you can have that too -"

She _looked_ at him. "Mokona is already mine, Kurogane. I needed eyes on you."

"Oh," Kurogane said, stupidly. He glanced back at Fai, so still and limp. Another fat droplet of blood was gathering, spilling down his cheekbones. "Well - what do you want? I'll pay. Just find that fucking healing mage!"

Yuuko breathed out slowly, smoke curling from her nose. "I have always had a soft heart for young love," she said, as if lamenting some deep character flaw. "Do you see his left hand, Kurogane?"

He did. It was clenched tight in a fist.

"I want what he holds," she said. "Get him to give it up, and we will see."

Kurogane had never touched anyone as gently in his adult life as when he set his hand over Fai's fist, pressing his thumb against Fai's little finger and trying to coax it to let go. Fai rolled his head, his brow furrowing as if in protest, and Kurogane froze, his heart thudding in his chest; Fai gripped whatever it was tighter.

"Oi," Kurogane said. "Idiot. It's me. Let me have it. It's important, okay?"

Fai didn't respond, and for a half-second Kurogane wondered what the hell he was doing; then his fingers loosened, revealing a glint of blue in his palm. Kurogane was unsurprised when he carefully parted Fai's hand and found the crystal, smaller now and with a crack running through its centre. It felt warm when he picked it up - _curious_ , almost.

"Here," he said, turning back to Yuuko, and then froze. She was no longer alone. Another figure was standing next to her, dressed in a blue coat, white knotwork at its shoulder and fur at its collar and throat; his eyes were as blue as... as Yuui's. Kurogane stared.

"Thank you," Yuuko said, solemnly. She glanced at Fai, the dead twin, the one who had destroyed the world. "I promised you the means through which to save your twin, did I not? Here he stands. Grant his wish."

"You're dead," Kurogane said, staring at the ghost.

"We both are," Yuuko said. "Not all who die pass on as easily as that, Kurogane. Give him his magic back."

Fai - the real Fai - took the crystal out of Kurogane's hand in silence, and Kurogane wasn't able to resist the urge to grab him by the sleeve, clench his fingers in the fabric to see if it was real. It was. Fai watched him do so with a knowing, understanding look, and then gently extracted his sleeve, turning the crystal over in his hand; he cupped it in both palms - bent his head, raised it to his forehead, and there was a... flash, of sorts. Not as bright as when Fai had destroyed it, back on the mountaintop in the real world.

The ghost of the first Fai drifted past Kurogane toward the living twin, crouching on the rug and touching his hands to Fai - to Yuui's knees. His whole face transformed, the solemn expression cracking away as he looked upon Fai, bloody and bruised as he was; and then he reached out and touched his chin, closed his eyes.

 _There was a glow,_ Fai had said, speaking of his brother's healing. Glow was the wrong word. The twins were _shining_.

When the dead twin drew back Fai didn't look any different; he was still covered in old blood. But no more blood was welling up from behind his eyes, and when Kurogane touched his throat carefully with his first two fingers, Fai's pulse was stronger, fluttering steadily beneath his touch. He glanced up at the dead twin.

"Thanks," he said, awkwardly. The twin didn't even look at him; he reached out, smoothed Fai's hair away from his face, smiled a smile so sad and so happy simultaneously that Kurogane wouldn't've believed it if he hadn't seen it.

"I gave you the opportunity to see Yuui before you were reborn," Yuuko said, "But healing requires a seperate price. You know what it is, I think."

The dead twin nodded and smiled, peaceful. He reached out and brushed some of Fai's blood from his cheek. "No magic," he said, his voice soft and echoing, tinny and distant like he was speaking down a bad phone line.

"Yes," Yuuko said simply. "It is time for you to prepare. Say your goodbyes."

Fai took a deep breath and turned to face Kurogane; he lifted his chin and smiled, and though he didn't speak a word, he didn't have to. _Keep him safe._

Then he kissed Fai's forehead, just once, before retreating. The witch reached out and jabbed her finger right into the centre of his head; there was a _flash_ , like a bolt of lightning, and he was _gone_. Kurogane looked around, uneasily, as though Fai's twin would have just jumped behind the sofa or something. "What price did he pay?"

Yuuko smiled at him. It was a sharp-edged smile, cool and thoughtful. "Fai's death is the latest in a long line of deaths," she said. "Over and over, they are born, they live, he dies. Sometimes it is an accident. Most of the time it is to protect Yuui. He never remembers his deaths, and so they go on, life after life: Fai dies, leaving Yuui behind, heartbroken and in pain. Sometimes," and here her voice took a playful turn - "There is a _you_ , to fix the heartbreak. But sometimes there isn't. Fai paid for the ability to heal Yuui with their magic. In their next incarnation, they won't have any, and they won't die. They'll live out a powerless, mundane life; working and sleeping and eating and growing old.

"Not all my prices are unreasonable, Kurogane."

"Tch," Kurogane said, but he glanced back at Yuui - or Fai or whatever he was. _His_ twin. "Who _are_ you?"

Yuuko took a long drag on her pipe, her eyes hooded as she gazed down at him. "I am the Witch," she said, in a heavy voice. "I am the woman Fei was willing to destroy the world to save, but I am, always, my own person. I do what I can. I am not a _reward_ , and my life is not for men to decide. Once upon a time I was in love. Once upon a time I was in your Fai's shoes, and the man I loved did an unspeakable thing for me, quite without meaning to. What would you have done, if I hadn't been here?"

Kurogane thought about it; about his mother, the stiff expression on her face as she slammed the car door closed, turning toward the soldiers; about Fai, mired in his grief. "Mourned," he said, eventually. "That's what you're supposed to do, when there's a death. All that stuff people say - about broken hearts, shit like that... it mends in time. Even if it never mends in full."

Yuuko just smirked, but he had the faintest understanding that he might have actually impressed her.

"Are we allowed to leave?" Kurogane asked, turning back to Fai. His chest was rising steady and deep, and Kurogane couldn't keep a small smile of relief from his face at the sight. "I... I want to take him back to people."

Yuuko nodded. "I," she said, in a far-too-casual tone of voice, "Can arrange to have you set down not far from your village's entrance, _with_ your belongings, including this."

She held Ginryuu in her hands. Kurogane wondered when it had appeared, and then decided that nothing had to make sense in this white nothing-space. "What's that gonna cost me," he said, wearily, and Yuuko's mouth curved up.

"Among your possessions there is an item of exquisite make," she said. "Sewed for you with love and care. I want that."

Kurogane stared at her. "Tell me you don't actually want the fucking bobble hat," he said.

Turned out she did.

* * *

There was a cacophony going on when Fai woke up. He angled his face to one side, burrowing into his pillow, trying to tip it over his head to drown out the noise, but that just served to make everything _louder_.

"Fai- Fai, can you hear me? Are you alright?"

"Where have you been?"

"Fai, are you alright? Fai, answer me!"

Finally a voice that sounded kind of familiar snapped, "All of you, _get out_ and stop harassing my patient! Not you, Kurogane."

There was a lot of complaining as people left. Fai used the time to cautiously stretch out his fingers and toes, open his eyes... ah. "Kuro-sama?" he said, quietly. "Are you there?"

A rustle of cloth. "Yeah, I'm here. You're in the clinic, first treatment room. Subaru is here with me."

Fai swallowed heavily. "We're alive."

Kurogane grunted. "They took the best and brightest at the College, huh?" he said, and it was so _Kurogane_ that Fai couldn't keep from smiling.

"Fai?" That was Subaru. "How do you feel?"

Fai thought about it. "Stiff, sore. I can't see. Is there something wrong with my eyes?"

"I..." He heard the hesitation in Subaru's voice, the unsurety. "I don't know. Yes. We don't know if it's permanent."

Fai thought of the flash of light as he destroyed the crystal, so blindingly white, and swallowed again. His throat was very dry. "Okay," he said, in a low voice.

"Could be worse," Kurogane said, deliberately casual. "Could be dead."

It was so true it made Fai smile despite himself. "How did we get back here?"

"A witch did it," Kurogane replied, and Fai furrowed his eyebrows. "I'll tell you about it later, idiot."

"You were both pretty banged up," Subaru said, absently, and there was the sound of turning pages, the scratching of a pen. "I'll want to talk with you both in a bit, but for now, get some rest. You were gone for a few weeks. I'll send Sakura in later with something to eat."

"Sakura?"

"Yeah," said Subaru. There was a kind of tightness to his voice when he said, "I needed an assistant. But like I said, we'll get around to it. I'll leave you two alone for now."

"You do that," Kurogane said, and Fai listened carefully for the sound of Subaru's footsteps, retreating across the floor - the swing and click of a door.

"He's angry with me," he said, miserably.

"Yeah," Kurogane agreed. "You'll deal with it. He won't be the only one. They were _worried_ about you."

To his surprise Fai felt Kurogane's hand touch his forearm, thick fighter's fingers curling around his wrist. Carefully he put his hand atop Kurogane's larger one. "Thank you."

"It's fine," Kurogane said, and then in a casual voice, like it wasn't a big deal at all, "I saw your brother."

" _What?_ "

And so Kurogane explained about the Witch, what she'd said. He hesitated over the matter of the deal Fai had struck with her, but Fai was hardly paying attention; he raised his free hand, ghosting over the bulky bandages covering his eyes like a blindfold, and pressed his fingertips to his forehead. If he tried he could imagine the spot Fai must have kissed him, and his heart pounded in his chest, the blood whirring in his eyes with the speed of it.

_I love you._

Five years. His spirit had waited five years to do that. Fai sucked in a breath, let it go with a shuddering hitch, and to his surprise, Kurogane stopped talking, squeezing his wrist gently. "I'm sorry," he said, feeling tears well up, small and not entirely sad behind the bandages.

"Idiot," said Kurogane. "It's okay to cry. Tears aren't always bad."

And Fai felt his breath hitch even as his grief rose in his throat; but it wasn't just grief, not any more. Love and gratitude and pure, simple happiness closed his throat as much as mourning. Kurogane _tch_ ed and tugged him close, pulling him down to that his head rested against the man's shoulder like that night in the cave, and he dug his fingernails into Kurogane's jacket and cried into the man's shoulder, letting his emotions finally have their way with him for the first time in five long, miserable years.

Kurogane didn't say anything; didn't even bother with the ridiculous _shush_ or _there there_. It wasn't his way. He was just _there_ , solid, like a rock Fai could lean against, and he didn't move away once Fai had cried himself out. They sat there, like that, in the treatment room Fai couldn't see, Kurogane warm and unyielding against his cheek.

When the door clicked open Fai resisted his initial urge to flinch away, to sit bolt upright and paste a smile on his face, some stupid _Nothing to see here!_ expression that never has fooled Kurogane. Instead he shifted and said, in a hoarse, tired voice, "Who is it?"

"Um, it's me," Sakura said, apologetically. "I brought some stew from Yuki. He wants to come by later, if you're feeling well enough."

Her shoes clicker-clacked across the floor, and Fai felt Kurogane shift to take it from her. "Don't," he said. "I need to... I'll cope. Put it on the bedside table please, Sakura. Can you... can you pass me the spoon?"

"It's here," Sakura said, and gently placed the spoon in his hand. Her fingers lingered over his. "Are you okay, doctor?"

"I wasn't," Fai said. "I think I'm getting better now. Show me where the bowl is?"

She directed him with the faintest touch on his hand, guiding him to sit upright, and showed him where the bowl was. Fai ate quickly, feeling Kurogane's hand heavy and affirming on the small of his back. The man was silent, perhaps appreciating how important it was that Fai do this. "It's good," he said, and then, quietly, "Tell Yukito thank you."

Sakura hesitated. "You can tell him yourself when he stops by, doctor," she said. "He was really worried for you. Touya was, too, but Touya has weird ways of showing it."

"What are you looking at _me_ like that for?" Kurogane growled, and Sakura giggled.

"Lots of people want to speak with you," she said. "I'll try to keep most of them out. But I have to let a few in, so they can spread the word that you're okay. Are you well enough to receive the first person now?"

Fai licked his lips and nodded, and said, in a drained voice, "Kuro-chan, if I ask you to leave, will you?"

"Yeah," Kurogane said. "You want me to go?"

"No. Not yet. Maybe."

The first visitor was Kazuhiko, who sat in a chair somewhere at the foot of the bed and asked after Fai's health. He talked about Ora's funeral, about how he had missed Fai's presence there, and then said, simply, "She would be happy to know you're back. Tell me, do you feel better?"

"Yes," Fai said. He touched his blindfold. "Kazuhiko, I'm sorry -"

"It's alright," Kazuhiko said softly. "You had your reasons. Are you going to be staying?"

Fai nodded, and that seemed to be enough for him.

After him was Tomoyo, who gave him a blindfold she had embroidered out of silk cloth and said, in a serene sort of voice, that she had known that he would be returning. "I'm glad you're better," she said. "Tell me, did Kurogane tell you what his mother told him?"

Kurogane growled. "I forgot, okay? Fuck."

"What did your mother tell you?" Fai asked, confused, and Kurogane made a noise like a pot bubbling over; low and growly.

"She said that red eyes mean wild magic," he said. "The witch had red eyes too."

"That would have been great to know during the fight, _Kuro-slow,_ Fai said, sharply, and Kurogane grumbled and Tomoyo giggled.

"Dear Kurogane," she said, and somehow even without eyes Fai could see the fond expression on her face. "Whatever are we to do with you?"

"He's hopeless," Fai agreed, and she made a noise of understanding, and Kurogane blustered and snapped a lot, and all in all by the time she left Fai was smiling and his chest felt warm. Tomoyo could have that affect on people, maybe. Or maybe it was just on him and on Kurogane.

There was a break after Tomoyo's visit; Sakura poked her head in and made Fai have a short nap. He would have protested, but Kurogane snorted and shifted up on the bed next to him, and he ended up curling against Kurogane's side, face resting on one of those strong arms, Kurogane's body heat blazing and relaxing, the man himself smelling somehow _clean_ , and though he had only meant to indulge the young nurse, he ended up dozing off, Kurogane beside him so strong and calm.

He woke up when Yukito and Touya slipped in, and he didn't need them to be introduced or to hear their voices to know who they were. There was something about the pattern of their steps.

"Good afternoon, Fai," Yukito said. A chair scraped, coming closer to the bed; Kurogane stroked a hand down Fai's spine, reassuring and steady, and then got up. Fai waited until he heard the door click behind him before turning his head toward the chair scrape noise, trying to sum up his courage.

"Yuki," Fai said, and then hesitantly unsure of his position, changed it to, "Yukito -"

"Yuki is fine," Yukito said. Fai could hear his smile in his voice. "How are you feeling?"

"Sore," Fai said.

"Hmph," Touya said.

Fai took a deep breath. He'd been thinking about this moment since he'd woken up. "I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have been keeping secrets from you. At the same time, the manner of the trade I was practising demands medic-patient confidentiality for a number of reasons, not least of which is to preserve the trust between the patient and their healer. Yukito was worried about his place in the society, and I feel that in that case, keeping it a secret was the right option... but I should have tried to convince him to tell you. I... did not deserve the trust I was given. And I'm sorry."

"It's alright," Yukito said. "I'll -"

"It's _not_ alright, Yuki," Touya said. "It was a stupid, lazy thing to do. But... I don't think you were trying to hurt anyone."

Fai didn't see anything, and after a while Touya sighed. "We've been talking about it a lot, while you've been gone," he said. "What constitutes 'contributing' to society. And we decided that it's the mind that matters, and that if it's occasionally let down by the body, that's the job of those with better bodies to help out. But I understand why you and Yuki were... concerned.

"Don't get me wrong, I think you were an idiot. But at least you weren't a malicious idiot, and Yuki is still here, so... it's okay, I guess. For now. Don't do it again."

"Never," Fai said, in a soft voice, and Touya grunted.

They stayed for a while after that, Fai and Yukito talking together in low voices; Yukito was full of news, some exciting, some worrying, some good. He talked about Ora's funeral, about the crops in their neat rows, about how Kusunagi and Yuzuriha were slogging out to the log cabin Kurogane said he'd left the bike in and then driving straight out on another trip. He talked about Saiga's homegrown herbs, putting just enough inflection on the word that Fai smiled despite himself; and he talked of the hunters and the people. He saved the biggest news for after Kurogane had returned, with a bottle of water for Fai.

"Arashi's pregnant," he said happily, and Fai exclaimed in soft wonder. It was the first one in five years. 

"Hope it takes after her and not that moron she married," Kurogane said, and Touya snorted in agreement. Still, Fai couldn't keep the smile off his face after they'd left.

"I wonder if it'll be a boy or a girl," he said, as Kurogane came to sit down next to him. "Oh - not that it matters, it's great news either way."

"Mmm," Kurogane said. "Won't you be looking after her? You don't necessarily need eyes to do like, diagnosis work, work?"

"Kind of," Fai said, frowning. "It's difficult to, say, diagnose a rash based on nothing but vague symptoms. But... yes. I should be able to go back to my job." He paused. "I'm kind of looking forward to it."

"Good," Kurogane said. "While you and the teacher were rabbiting away, I found this."

There was the round of rustling papers, and Fai bit his lip, curious. In a steady, even voice, Kurogane read, "The Physician's Oath. This is the thing you guys are supposed to swear when you graduate, right?"

"You just found that? Where?"

"In one of the textbooks," Kurogane said. "I asked the girl to help me find it. I thought..."

He trailed off, and Fai felt suddenly like his chest was two sizes too small to contain how this man made him feel. "I never swore it," he said softly. "I..."

"Do you want to?" Kurogane asked, bluntly. "If you're going to be the village physician again -"

"Yes," Fai said. "I'll swear it. Now. Here. To you, and to everyone who isn't in this room. I... I want to accept some responsibility, Kuro-sama."

He didn't know how he knew Kurogane was smiling, but he was. And when Kurogane leaned forward and bumped his mouth against Fai's forehead, something that was neither a kiss nor a nuzzle but somewhere in between, it just made him smile back. Kurogane leaned away, and his voice was all business when he said, "Okay. Repeat after me: I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant..."

Fai followed him, keeping his voice even and steady as he repeated the words after Kurogane. And when he finished, trailing off on the words, "may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help," he felt, for the first time, whole and happy in his skin.

 

"I love you," he said. It was the easiest and hardest thing he'd ever said, so simple and so complicated. He didn't expect an answer, but Kurogane scoffed and shifted, the mattress springs creaking under his weight, and bent his head to slip a hand around the back of Fai's neck.

"You too," he said, and kissed Fai - not harsh and biting, like he'd tried in that cave, but soft and gentle, the way Fai liked it. His lips were rough and chapped, and frankly he tasted like bad morning breath, but there were no words for how little Fai cared about of that.

For a while there was nothing but kissing, Fai documenting the taste of Kurogane's mouth, the sharp points of his teeth, how unsure he was with his tongue. Kurogane let the paper go - it dropped down onto Fai's lap between them - and caught Fai's face between his palms, Fai's cheeks resting in his strong grip. His touch was surprisingly gentle, and in his hands, Fai felt safe.

When the door clicked they parted, but only reluctantly. "How many more people are you letting in?" Kurogane growled, then faltered.

"Just me," Subaru said. "Fai, if you have a second?"

"Yeah," Fai said. He touched Kurogane's arm gently, following his... lover? Companion's? skin down, the pulse of veins until he found Kurogane's wrist. He tapped his fingers lightly there, against the soft skin on its inside, and said, "Kuro-sama, if you could leave us for a second?"

"Yeah," Kurogane said, climbing off the bed, and the door closed behind him.

"Welcome back," Subaru said, quietly shifting the chair Yukito had used earlier. It creaked as he settled himself into it. "I'm sorry about your eyes."

"Please don't apologise to me," Fai said. "It wasn't fair of me to leave you. I'm sorry, Subaru."

"Kurogane told me something of what happened," Subaru said. "I - I didn't know you were a twin."

Fai licked his lips, looked away. "Was."

"I was a twin too, once," Subaru said. "I wonder - I wondered, for a while, after we had you back - if maybe I was somehow to blame. If by not telling you I made you feel more alienated."

"No," Fai said, immediately. "No, Subaru, this wasn't your fault, it's..." He sighed. "It was complicated."

"These things usually are." Without his eyes Fai had nothing to rely on but Subaru's tone; but he could hear the way the young man sighed, shifting in his seat. "I think perhaps we both have been keeping secrets," Subaru continued carefully, "Under the misapprehension that this somehow makes them go away. Makes them hurt less."

 _Oh_ , Fai thought with sudden dawning realisation. This too was a kind of healing. Talking things over, talking them _out_ , was cathartic - was good. He hadn't known that for so long. "Subaru," he said, foregoing the usual suffix and keeping his tone soft and kind, "I'm not going anywhere anymore. I... I still want to stay here and I want to do what I did before. I'm sorry for dumping all that responsibility on you. It was unfair of me. It's okay to be angry."

Subaru let out a soft _heh_. "I'm glad to hear it," he said. "But I'm not mad anymore. I was, but... I've been sleeping better, Fai, and I've stopped having so many nightmares. I think... I think maybe this is helping."

After a pause he added, "You can't have your old room here back. But I think Kurogane will take you in, if you ask."

"I'll do that," Fai said warmly, and heard Subaru breath out, steadily. The moment stretched out; Fai imagined the high-up windows. "When is it?"

"Ten-thirty in the evening," Subaru said, checking his watch. "It's pitch-black out there. Why?"

"I... I can't tell. I was just wondering." He looked away. "Will you tell me about your twin?"

A pause, and then Subaru said, in a very soft sort of voice, "Why do you ask?"

Fai could answer that. He said, "I just swore an oath regarding patient treatment. It had a line in it I think is highly relevant. Would you like to hear it?" He waited for Subaru's small noise of assent before continuing, "The line in question says, 'I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.' This is how I choose to apply that line. Will you tell me?"

And Subaru's breath hitched, soft and shaky. Fai wondered what they looked like, sitting in candle-lit warmth in a dark world, the oil lanterns wasted on the blind man.

He'd been so caught up in his pain, all that time. He'd allowed it to blind him, to drown out the suffering of others. Subaru had been right under his nose. He'd had enough of failing, he decided, and curled his right hand into a fist. Fai had died to give him life; all his life he had wondered _Which of us was the Luck Child_?

But now he knew; that luck is meaningless, something you choose to forge yourself, and he was choosing _this_.

"Hokuto," Subaru said, in a rush. "My sister's name was Hokuto. There was a man I knew, named Seishirou...."

His voice was shaky and filled with grief; there was damage there that could be mended. Fai bent his head forward, and for the first time in his life, actually _listened_ to what people were trying to tell him.

Do no harm.


	6. Epilogue: The heart is hard to translate

"Is this a fucking bobblehat?"

Fai grinned. "It might be."

"Why the fuck do you have a bobblehat?"

"Tomoyo sewed it for me! Don't you think that was kind of her? She said she's making another one for you, and for Mokona -"

"What."

"Didn't you hear? Moko-chan turned up at the gates yesterday! Fuuma brought her to Subaru and she came right to me~"

"Oh, fuck me," Kurogane muttered.

They were gathered in Fai's old room in the clinic, shifting his stuff into crates. It had been a week. Fai was more than happy to move out of the drafty clinic and into Kurogane's house with him, but Kurogane was being stubborn about lugging all of Fai's stuff over for him. He kept objecting -

"We are not bringing the entire village's supply of condoms."

Fai frowned. "But that's part of my job," he pointed out. "People know they can come to me for these things!" He leaned forward - groped a bit until his fingers closed around one of the foil-wrapped packages in the box - and dangled it in the air. "Besides, maaaaybe we'll need them. I am planning on helping Kuro-sama _introduce me_ to his bed. Thoroughly."

Kurogane yelped, and it was amazing, Fai thought, how his eyes still weren't working properly and yet he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the man was flushed bright red.

"Look," Kurogane growled, "We are not having sex with that fox in the room. I told you it was a spy for the witch!"

Fai pouted at him and patted the bed - Subaru's bed now, he supposed - next to him. Mokona jumped up next to him helpfully, the bell on her collar jingling. "Kuro-sama hates you," he said to her, sadly. "He's _mean_ and _hopeless_ -"

"I didn't say she couldn't _stay_!" Kurogane snapped. "I just don't want the _witch_ using that thing's eyes to... to _watch_ us. 'S weird!"

Mokona _meeped_ at him. It was as good a retort as any.

"Fai?" Syaoran poked his head in through the door. "Is that everything? Sakura says it's almost finished over there... uh..."

"Can't believe I was kicked out of my own fucking house all afternoon," Kurogane grumbled.

Fai grinned. "I can't wait to see it after Tomoyo and the others have finished redecorating," he said happily.

"Idiot, you can't _see_ anything," Kurogane groused. "You would have believed me if I'd told you it had fucking unicorn wallpaper -"

"... No," Fai said, and Syaoran made a noise suspiciously like a snort of laughter before silencing himself hastily, no doubt after a glare from Kurogane. Fai resumed kicking his feet absently over thin air while Mokona picked her way over to his lap, and then he dropped a hand to her thick fur as she daintily curled herself into a little ball there.

"My house," Kurogane was grumbling.

"Nope," Fai said, and couldn't keep the genuine grin from his face, wide and expressive and stupidly happy, when he added, "Ours."

"Tch," Kurogane said. He didn't sound as cranky as he could, and when Fai held out a hand he took it, his fingers rough and calloused against Fai's palm. He let Fai draw him closer - Mokona _meeping_ indignantly as Kurogane shoved her off Fai's lap - until Kurogane settled between Fai's thighs; Fai tipped his head up and tugged at Kurogane's hand by way of hint, and the big man growled under his breath for show before bending down to kiss him. He was smiling into the kiss, though, so Fai figured it didn't really matter.

"I'll just... go," Syaoran said, with a sigh. "Come on Moko-chan, they're going to be like this for ages."

Yeah, Fai thought. With any luck, this feeling - the glow of happiness in his chest, satisfaction and affection and _love_ \- would be sticking around for a long time. Forever, if possible.

He'd thought - long ago now, in a far less clear time - that there would be two world-endings in his life; the one Fai had died to bring about - ash storms and monsters and a few struggling survivors, and another, a more personal one. His situation would have qualified for it; secrets revealed, Fai dead, blind with no guarantee of ever regaining his sight... but it hadn't turned out that way.

Life went on. _His_ life went on. And he was happy to keep it that way.

Maybe he was the lucky one, maybe he wasn't. Either way, he was content, and wasn't that what mattered?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story was written for Dreamwidth in 2012; I'm posting it in May 2019 to try and keep my fic together in one place - AO3. It was my first ever multi-chapter fic to be completed successfully and I wrote it from scratch in under 36 hours for the deadline! It's rough and unpolished but despite that I'm still proud of it, which is why I've moved it here relatively intact. 
> 
> If you're reading this, I hope you enjoyed it, and thank you. ♥


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